y a light, and then an orderly series
of them pushed out from behind the last bend downstream, and showers of
sparks from the belching stacks of the oncoming fur company boat danced
and whirled high into the night, the splashing tattoo of her churning
paddles sounding like music between the reassuring blasts of her
whistle. The two stokers hanging from the levers of her safety valves
kicked their feet in time with her whistle, not knowing which kick would
usher them on an upward journey ending at St. Peter's eager gate. Their
skins were as black as the rods they swung from, but their souls were as
white as their rolling eyes.

"Thank God!" screamed a woman who was fighting her way through the crowd
toward Tom's post, her clothing nearly torn from her; and at the words
she sagged to the deck, inert, unresisting. Tom leaped forward and
hauled her back with him, passed her on to Patience and resumed his grim
guard.

A great shout, still tinged with horror and edged with fear, arose from
the decks of the _Belle_ and thundered across the river, the answering
roar chopped up by the insistent whistle. Several red, stringy,
rapier-like flashes pierced the night and the heavy reports barked
across the hurrying water, to be juggled by a great cliff on the north
bank.

Captain Newell had been busy. Learning that cool minds were dominating
the panicky crowd, and that the bullboats were being properly launched
and were ready for use if the worst came, he gave his undivided
attention to the saving of the _Belle_. Her paddle still thrashed, but
at a speed just great enough to overcome the current and to hold the
snag in the wound it had made. Experience told him that once she drew
back from that slimy assassin blade and fully opened the rent in her
hull her sinking would follow swiftly. Already men had sounded the river
on both sides and reported a steep slant to the bottom, twenty feet of
water on the port side and fifteen on the starboard. One of the spare
yawls, manned by two officers and a deck hand, shot away from the boat
and made hurried soundings to starboard, the called depths bringing a
look of hope to the captain's face. Forty yards to the right lay a
nearly flat bar; but could he make that forty yards? There remained no
choice but to try, for while the _Missouri Belle_, if she sank in her
present position, would not be entirely submerged, she would be even
less so every foot she made toward the shallows.

Part of the