al channel
were again divided, north and south, and the steamer, with another
eastward turn, straightened up for the southern passage between the bar
and Sixty-three.

"We'll pass her close," said one of the boat's family to those who hung
on his words. "In this low water she's got to come round the bar and
well over to the left bank, same as us."

On the boiler deck and on the roof passengers of the kind that see for
themselves pointed out to the kind that see only what they are shown the
smoke of another boat, across the forests on the Arkansas side, in Old
Town Bend. There were ways for some to know even at that distance that
she was a craft they had never yet seen, but every two minutes the
distance grew less by a mile. Presently, as the nearer boat, giving the
bar's eastern head a wide berth, swung once more into the north, the
_Enchantress_ glided into view on the larboard bow hardly two miles
away. But before the _Enchantress_ as well, looking south across the
same interval, gleamed a picture worthy of her delight. For there came
the _Votaress_, curling white ribbons from her cutwater, her people
waving and cheering, a swivel barking from her prow, and the whistles
high up between her chimneys roaring in long salute.

By no premeditation could the unpremeditated scene have been finer. The
_Votaress_, as she took the wider circuit against the Mississippi shore,
caught the whole power of the setting sun on all her nearer side while
she swept close along an undivided curtain of autumn forest drenched in
the same sunlight and quaking to her sudden breeze. North and west of
her, where the sand-bar lay bare of trees, the _Enchantress_, larger,
stronger, swifter, moved in her own shade but was set against the far
splendor of a saffron, green, and crimson sky in which the fiery sun
showed only its upper half sinking beneath the landscape. The lights of
all her decks, just lit, gave no vivid ray but glinted like gems on a
court lady. Her bridal whiteness was as pure hid from the sunbeams as
her sister's bathed in them. From both the high black smoke streamed
away through the evening calm and from their twinkling wheels the foam
swept after them like trains of lace. We speak for our poet, who,
lacking fit imagery of his own, recalled one of Jenny Lind's songs:

"I see afar thy robe of snow,
I see thy dark hair wildly flow,
I hear thy airy step so light,
Thou com'st to wish thy love good night.