captain had squared Basile with the ticket treasurer and by some
adroitness of Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore the restless boy had been won from
his brothers and given a hand at euchre with the actor, the senator, and
a picturesque Kentuckian, late of California, "back East" by way of the
Isthmus and about to return by the Plains.

Another of this hurricane-roof assemblage was a young gentleman whom
Ramsey told Basile it was not a bit nice to speak of as Watson's cub.
And there were all the amateur players, eager for the evening's
performance; and there, too, the senator, the general, John the Baptist,
and others with whom Ramsey had not made better acquaintance only for
lack of moments! One of these was the Californian. Think of it! A man
whose shirt-pin was a gold nugget of his own digging, yet a man so
modest as to play euchre with Basile, and who stood thus far utterly
uncatechised save by John the Baptist. Oh, time, time! A history of this
voyage must and should be written with large room given to these last
ten hours: "Chronicles of a Busy Life," by "A Young Lady of Natchez."

Captain Courteney stood near the bell. Watson was up at the wheel. His
cub--whose attentions to Basile, like the Californian's, only Ramsey
could not fathom--told her this was the second dog-watch. He was telling
her everything he knew. She was asking him everything he knew not.
Indeed, among all there was great giving and getting of information on
matters alow and aloft. There was, too, frequent praise of the
commodore, the doctor, the priest, the sisters of charity, Madame
Hayle--all those heroic ones on the immigrant deck, where the pestilence
was making awful headway. But there was so perfect a silence as to the
bishop that it was manifest that every one knew about him but was too
discreet to tell.

Matters beyond the boat, too, far and near, were much discussed, though
some actually saw the sunset they were all there to see. Nowhere within
five hundred miles the compass round, the actor said, was there a town
of ten thousand souls, if of five thousand. Nowhere within a hundred
miles was there a town population of five hundred. Since the morning
thundershower the _Votaress_ had come ninety miles, yet the great Yazoo
Delta was still ahead, abeam, astern, on the river's Mississippi side.
Some one told two or three, who told four or five, it was a hundred and
seventy-five miles long by an average of sixty wide, and covered seven
thousand square