_Empress_, as we know, a sight only less
inspiring on this deck than to Ramsey on the roof; shining, saluting,
huzzaing, then fading round the bend. When the card-tables were set out
our group of seven fell into three parts. The squire and the general sat
down to a game with a Vicksburg merchant and a Milliken's Bend planter,
who "couldn't play late," their wives being on the boat. The twins,
ceasing to tell the senator and the bishop what damnable things _some_
boats were known to have done for the sake of speed, went down-stairs to
take a glance at the safety-valve, following a few steps behind the
captain. For him they had just seen, as he came down from the roof to
their deck and met an unexpected messenger from the engine-room,
promptly turn with him and go below. But their needless glance at the
safety-valve they never took. They saw only two or three poor women
sobbing like babes, the dead body of a young man being prepared for
burial, and the carpenter finishing his coffin. When the captain, as
will be remembered, went back to the hurricane-deck to tell their
mother, they went too.

The boat's torches enabled all on the various decks to view the burial.
It ended the game of cards. During the swift ceremony and long after it
the twins consulted the squire, the general, the Vicksburger, the
senator, the bishop, the judge, and the planter from Milliken's Bend as
to what ought to be done. They took care to advance their questions and
suggestions singly and according to the nature of each hearer's
inflammability, and as each one kindled they brought him close to
another, Julian always supplying the hardihood, Lucian the guile. Here
were men, they said, and soon had others saying--the squire to the
merchant, the general to the Milliken's Bend planter--here were men,
gentlemen, scores on scores, not to say hundreds, who at all times and
everywhere could take the chances of life like men, like gentlemen,
native American gentlemen. But here also were women and children, the
families of many of these gentlemen. Such risks were not for such women
and children. Was no step to be generally agreed upon? Was it to be
supinely assumed that the owners of the _Votaress_, now mainly
preoccupied in overhauling the _Antelope_, knew all that was best to do
and would punctually do it all?

The twins did not originate half the inquiries or replies, they merely
started the ferment and kept it working. "You saw at table, did you not,
t