No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.

So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower
deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont
to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and
hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled
sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:

"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."

Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on
its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again
on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for
Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's,"
and now known as Pawpaw Island.

"California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair
at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the
Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two
hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge,
liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?"
before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the
three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree
mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close
after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north.

"Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft
sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly
teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an'
a hafe yeahs youngeh!-- Ain't she?-- She certain'y is! An' that deah
Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!

"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,--well,--why,--you know,--time an' again we
heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but--why,--lemme look at you
again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just
fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that
Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,--don't you remembeh?--on the _Vot'ress_,
an' you showed us,--in the sky. They there yet!

"An'"--the five heads drew close together--"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't
such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he--mmm,
hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,--oh, you must 'a' heard
it,--they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an'
could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought b