er decks; now paced
them, now stood, now sat, and had found each best in its turn; but such
open-air seclusion itself drew notice, made notice more felt, and so the
dusk of the pilot-house had soon been found best of all. It remained so
now--while the great chimneys out forward breathed soothingly, and a
mile astern glimmered the _Westwood_, and a mile ahead glimmered the
_Antelope_, and here among the few occupants of the visitors' bench
there drifted a soft, alluring gossip about each newly turned bend of
the most marvellous of rivers. To nestle back in its larboard corner
while now some one came up and in and now some one slipped down and out,
and while ever the pilot's head and shoulders and the upper spokes of
his vigilant wheel stood outlined against the twinkling sky and rippling
air, was like resting one's head on the _Votaress's_ bosom.

And yet another reason made sleep unthinkable. He who had said, "I need
you," was awake, was on watch. Now that the feud, blessed thought, was
all off, sworn off, and a lingering mistrust of the twins seemed quite
unsisterly, probably that need of her, or illusion of need, had passed.
Well, if so he ought to say so! For here were great cares and dangers
yet. The river was out of all its bounds. Most of those bounds
themselves and the great plantations behind them were under the swirling
deluge. The waters of Scrubgrass Bend, for instance, were crosscutting
over Scrubgrass Towhead in one league-wide sheet, and Islands
Seventy-this-and-that and Islands Sixty-that-and-this were under them to
their tree-tops. These things might be less fearful in fact than in
show, or might be a matter wherein it was only a trifle more imbecile to
think of her helping than in some others. Yet here were officers and
servants of the boat busy out of turn and omitting routine duties
unfortunate to omit and which she might perform if they would but let
her. She noticed the presence of both pilots at once--Watson at the
wheel, Ned on the bench. No wonder, with so awesome a charge; guiding a
boat like this, teeming with human souls and driven pell-mell through
such a war of elemental forces in desert darkness, with never a beacon
light from point to point, from hour to hour; running every chute, with
a chute behind nearly every point or island, and the vast bends looping
on each other like the folds of a python and but little more to be
trusted.

And here was this "Harriet" affair, a care and danger tha