ttle resentfully. "I who speak
to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much
tafia, a little too much excite--" and he made a gesture with his hand
expressive of total destruction; "ze tornado, I would sooner have him--"

"Bah!" said Nick, stroking Xavier's black beard, "give me the tiller. I
will see you through safely, and we will not spare the tafia either."
And he began to sing a song of Xavier's own:--

"'Marianson, dame jolie,
Ou est alle votre mari?'"

"Ah, toujours les dames!" said Xavier. "But I tell you, Michie, le
diable,--he is at ze bottom of ze Grand Gulf and his mouth open--so."
And he suited the action to the word.

At night we tied up under the shore within earshot of the mutter of the
place, and twice that night I awoke with clinched hands from a dream of
being spun fiercely against the rock of which Xavier had told, and sucked
into the devil's mouth under the water. Dawn came as I was fighting the
mosquitoes,--a still, sultry dawn with thunder muttering in the distance.

We breakfasted in silence, and with the crew standing ready at the oars
and Xavier scanning the wide expanse of waters ahead, seeking for that
unmarked point whence to embark on this perilous journey, we floated down
the stream. The prospect was sufficiently disquieting on that murky day.
Below us, on the one hand, a rocky bluff reached out into the river, and
on the far side was a timber-clad point round which the Mississippi
doubled and flowed back on itself. It needed no trained eye to guess at
the perils of the place. On the one side the mighty current charged
against the bluff and, furious at the obstacle, lashed itself into a
hundred sucks and whirls, their course marked by the flotsam plundered
from the forests above. Woe betide the boat that got into this devil's
caldron! And on the other side, near the timbered point, ran a counter
current marked by forest wreckage flowing up-stream. To venture too far
on this side was to be grounded or at least to be sent back to embark
once more on the trial.

But where was the channel? We watched Xavier with bated breath. Not
once did he take his eyes from the swirling water ahead, but gave the
tiller a touch from time to time, now right, now left, and called in a
monotone for the port or starboard oars. Nearer and nearer we sped,
dodging the snags, until the water boiled around us, and suddenly the
boat shot forward as in a mill-race, and