down to the steamboat
landing to view the new _Enchantress_, there was a double funeral in the
old French cemetery, Saint Louis Street, New Orleans.

Returning from it together, Watson and his former "cub" spoke of Gideon
Hayle.

"He takes the loss of them boys harder'n what I'd 'a' thought he would,"
said the younger pilot.

And Watson replied: "Yes, but he don't take it as hard as what, years
ago, he tuck their fust refus'n' to go with him on the river."

They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal, out Canal to
the steamboat landing, and across the levee to the _Enchantress_. An
hour later they stood in her wheel-house, looking down on the same
Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus
contemplated from the _Votaress_ a hundred months before.

Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth, the same crowds and
little flags, the same shouting and tumult only grown greater, the same
open sky--though of October--the same many-pillared cloud of black
smoke, the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges, bananas,
pineapples, corals, and seashells--many of the latter treated with
puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with
muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy
little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long
catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its
white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the
same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and
here, finally, the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in
their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which
now seems but a bad dream outlived.

Steam was up on the _Enchantress_, and every now and then her mighty
wheels tugged on her hawsers. In the crowd gathered on the wharf to see
her go were the Gilmores and the half dozen from Vicksburg and the
Bends. Up on the hurricane-deck were two or three small knots of
passengers, chiefly ladies, unknown to the Gilmore group; but beside a
derrick post, where we first saw Hugh on the _Votaress_, stood the three
Hayles, old Joy, and "California"--bound once more for the
gold-diggings. Near the Hayles, yet nearer the bell, was Hugh, in
command.

"You don't reckon," said a voice in the throng, "that that's her
captain, do you?"

"No," said another, "I should think not."

"Yes," said the very human Gi