CHAPTER XXX.
BEN LOSES HOPE AND TURNS NAVIGATOR.
When the captain regained the "Roarer" and Bertha and Ben were safely stowed in the little stave-cabin, with kind faces bending over and kind hands ministering to them, Cap'n Willum Smiff walked slowly toward Lieutenant Jeremiah Jarphly and said:
"Jerry, yoh recommember this morn' when we tossed thet thar stave fur the chute or agin hit?"
"Yes."
"Well, Jerry, thet wus abowed stave, an' I spit on thebowed sideof hit, an' by rights the bowed side oughter hev cum down—but hit did't, Jerry."
"No."
Then Cap'n Smiff looked hard at his Lieutenant, as though he was trying to shape some unfamiliar thoughts into words.
"No, hit didn't, Jerry. The bent side didn't come down—it come up. An' it war agin science, Jerry; but hit come up an' we tuk toh the chute, an'—an' mought hev sumthin'—thar mought somebody—I dunno—IswarI dunno!" and, as though the unfamiliar thoughts were muddling his brain, Cap'n Willum Smiff walked back to the stem of the "steer'n o'r," and slowly straddling it, deluged his surroundings in tobacco juice, while he lost himself in profound meditation.
There are others than unsophisticated Captain William Smith who have pondered deeply on the same subject, and been lost at sea far from the lighthouse ofFaith.
That evening found the "Roarer" with a line out to a check post on the levee below the city of Vicksburg. On parting from the crew of the flatboat Bertha had distributed all she had of value about her person among them, and bestowed upon Cap'n Smith a glittering diamond cluster ring from off her hand. Cap'n Willum Smiff at first refused to take it, but comprehending that he would hurt the young lady's feelings by refusing longer, he suspended the jewel with a piece of tow about his neck, and vowed that there it should stay 'till death did them part. Alas, for the fragile nature of human vows! In less than a week the diamonds glistened on the person of a New Orleans bar-tender; hypothecated for drinks; while Cap'n Willum Smiff and Lieutenant Jarphly were on one of their "Reg'lar Pelican Sprees! A howlin' Wilderness! You bet!"
After Bertha had been comfortably cared for in bed at the hotel, where she immediately retired under the direction of a physician, Ben, first refreshing himself with a good meal, which she insisted upon his eating, went to the telegraph office and sent the following message to Mr. Charles Braster of the firm of Braster & Chetwick, Poydras Street, New Orleans: "Your niece is here safe. Is Mr. Braster in the city?" And then with a beating heart he awaited a reply. For Ben had formed new hopes, and thought that perhaps the disaster on the Argenta might after all have been a stroke of good fortune in his favor. In the course of half an hour an answer was returned, and as the boy delivered it to him, he had not the courage to look at it. He unfolded the dispatch, trembled, then folding it up again without reading, placed it in his pocket and hastened toward the hotel. Having walked a block he gained heart, and slowly taking the dispatch from his pocket, unfolded it and read:
"Thank God. Arthur and myself are both here safe. Come down on the Natchez to-night."(signed) "Charles Braster."
"Thank God. Arthur and myself are both here safe. Come down on the Natchez to-night."
(signed) "Charles Braster."
That was all. But it was quite enough. His last hope lay in the dust. "Arthur and myself are here safe." He read it again as if hoping against hope. Blackoat was saved! Blackoat was safe and the idol of his life had passed from his grasp.
He could not meet her again; he dared not. Seating himself in the office of the hotel he wrote the following note:
Dear Miss Bertha:—I wish you joy.Bothof your relatives are safe. Oh, Bertha, I dare not see you again, my darling, my darling. Pardon my weakness, but if you only knew how sore my heart is you would pity me. We will probably never meet again. May your life be one of joy and happiness. You will doyourduty nobly—I will, please God, try to do mine. God bless you, my darling, God bless you. May your future be as full of sunlight as the labor of my life would have made it. Again farewell—Heaven bless you.Ben.
Dear Miss Bertha:—I wish you joy.Bothof your relatives are safe. Oh, Bertha, I dare not see you again, my darling, my darling. Pardon my weakness, but if you only knew how sore my heart is you would pity me. We will probably never meet again. May your life be one of joy and happiness. You will doyourduty nobly—I will, please God, try to do mine. God bless you, my darling, God bless you. May your future be as full of sunlight as the labor of my life would have made it. Again farewell—Heaven bless you.
Ben.
Having dispatched this to Bertha with the telegram he walked out into the street—again atramp. And a tramp with a sad, sad heart.
It was the last day of September. He was two hundred miles by land and twice as many by river from New Orleans, and had but a day more and a portion of October the 2d to win his wager in. His chances looked desperate. But he was indifferent whether he won or lost. A dull, dead apathy to everything had taken possession of him. He felt that it was a luxury to be a vagabond, an outcast, a tramp, and half inclined not to go to New Orleans at all, but to start off on a roving career, and ramble, ramble, ramble, trying to get away from himself.
"Ye're a stout looking lad; can ye handle a barry? If ye can I'm taking down a gang of fifty min the night to Burk's work on the levee fifteen mile this side of Baton Rouge, and if yez wants to come along, a dollar a day and four jiggers is the pay," and the stout florid man who addressed him asked:
"Will yez go or not? Make yer answer quick, for I'm in a hurry."
"Yes, I'm in for a job, and ready," replied Ben, seizing the opportunity to leave Vicksburg.
"Very well," said the man. "Go down and get aboord the Roddy for she'll be laving in an hour. I will see ye on boord and pass yez down."
So on board the Roddy went Ben, and before she started forty more men engaged for the levee squad had joined him. In ten minutes' conversation with these he discovered that not one half of them had any intention of working on the levee. They were simplytravelling. Some were, like himself, on their way to New Orleans. Others were off of the great Harvest Range, and had already stole their way thus far and were simply "putting in the winter." That is, drifting from place to place as sweet fancy directed them. They would stop at the levee camp and live off of its rations until hunted out, after which they would take up their line of tramping without an object in view or an ambition to prompt them. As they went down stream now, so the spring would see them going up, and the summer months find them scattered through the northern states. Had one of them been termed a professional tramp or "dead beat" he would have repelled the insinuation with indignation. They were after work but never caught up with it. There were some Americans in the crowd on the boat but the majority were foreigners.
"Why don't you stay and work at the levee?" Ben asked one of them; "you can earn a dollar a day at it."
"I'm a brick mason," he replied. "I can not do levee work. Neither can you, as you'll find out if you stop and try it."
"But is there no other work save leveeing in the country?" asked Ben.
"Oh, yes; there's cotton picking. Lots of the bums work all winter at it. They get from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a quarter a hundred, and can earn from one to two dollars a day. But the living is beastly! The southern peoplemeanwell enough, but they have no idea how a laboring man is treated up north, and they use you just the same as they do the niggers; give you rations—a peck of corn meal, five pounds of salt pork and a pound of salt a week. You take this and cook it the best way you can, and sleep in the cotton pen, or any where you please—that'syourlookout. Working for the niggers, a man gets treated a great deal better than he does working for the white people. The niggers feed you better and they are surer pay."
"What!" cried Ben; "Do the colored people employ white men?"
"Dothey? Well I should say. Thousands of 'em every winter. A good many of the blacks own land and are well fixed, while nearly all of them that don't own no land of their own, work land on shares."
Ben shortly found a clean spot on the deck and lying down took a much needed sleep.
It was early morning, and still dark, when they disembarked at the camp. The men were all up, however, and as he passed through one of the sheds he had an opportunity for investigating the mysteries of a levee camp. There was not much to see. A long line of rough board bunks, two tier high, were ranged on both sides of the shanty, that was supposed to accommodate four hundred men. That was all. No other furniture, no other necessaries or comfort. Ben thought it a close approach to a stable. Which indeed it was, only the animals cared for were human. While looking about him a bell rang, at sound of which there was a general cry of "Jiggers! Jiggers!" and a rush by the four hundred for the outside, where they surged in impatience about a man mounted on a barrel, who was dealing out whiskey to them in a small tin cup. This was the "Jigger boss," and four of these cupfuls of the liquor were a man's daily rations.
After all had received their jiggers, the cry of "grub pile! grub pile!" was taken up by the crowd, and a rush made for a long line of tables standing under another shed. These were loaded with tin plates and pannikins, iron forks and knives, stacks of snowy wheat bread, (for the levees have as fine bread as there is in the country) juvenile mountains of smoking "salt-horse," and immense platters of the fruit known as the "spud laurel," while great pots of a dirty brown liquid, facetiously termed "coffee" were liberally scattered about. This constituted breakfast. Our hero ate heartily, aided in his gastronomic efforts by a number of tallow dips stuck in their own grease along the tables at intervals, and which were continually being knocked over by the banqueters as they passed along the food. The repast finished Ben went with the crowd to the levee, just as it became light enough to see to work. There he became proprietor of a shovel and wheelbarrow, and was stationed in a line with twelve others; similar squads occupying the levee-line for a distance of half a mile. Scarce had he thrown three shovels full of dirt into his vehicle, when a shrill little voice piped out, "up all!" and the line began to wheel their barrows up a steep incline of planks, on to the broad "dump" that constituted the levee they were building.
"Oye, ye little dyvil, yez is at it airly!" shouted one.
"He haven't a spoonful of dirt in his barry!" said another.
"Be jazez, we'll chuck him into the drink!" said a third.
"And the dyvil fly away wid the bones of the little ferrit!" cried a fourth.
These remarks were directed at a little withered-up old man who was "fore-barrow man," or leader of the gang.
"If McCarty don't take that lad and put him to sturring pots in the soup house, we'll murther him!" exclaimed an exasperated levee builder in the line.
"Can't he purt a dacent man that'll do a dacent day's wurruk in the lade, and not be havin' that canary there killin' of the min wid his 'up alls' an' his own barry without the bottom of it covered?"
"Dyvil blow McCarty and dyvil blow little Dinny, but I'll crish the skull av him in wid a blow of me shovel if he don't be loadin his barry, and not running the feet off av us!"
The little man treated the remarks with dignified indifference, and his "up alls" continued to be a theme of hot maledictions. He was a little used up old levee builder, whose only usefulness now consisted in his being able to hurry the rest of the gang, as a "fore-barrow"; a position that no good laborer would have cared to have filled with the intention of imposing on his co-laborers.
The third time Ben wheeled his "buggy" up the steep incline of planks, he wheeled it off, and both he and the barrow had a fall of six feet much to the hilarity of the gang. This happened to him twice in succession, and as he was ascending the third time off he went, and toppled the plank over with him, bringing three other barrows and their navigators to the ground. A loud howl of execrations greeted this catastrophe. Our hero was called a "watchmaker!" "a flute-player!" "a dancing-master!" "a mud-clark!" "a 'sodden'!" "To go tip the plank over on the min!" "Waz it their loif he waz afther!" "Sure it's graves he should be using his shovel at, and not livyin'!"
The howlings attracted the walking-boss to the spot.
"What the dyvil did yez go for to tip the plank over on the min for?" he asked.
Ben replied that it was an accident.
"An occident! Howly Mother! An wazn't the plank afoor yer nose? Would yez want a barn flure to roll the barry on?"
Ben mollified the boss's wrath by telling him of his late shipwreck and the weakness caused thereby.
"Well, ye poor dyvil, yez doan't want to be stoppin' on the livy. Every year there do be rigimints of min that's not fit to shovel sawdust, come tramping along, and aten' the camps up. But you've been missfourtinate. The best yez'll do for yersel will be to get to New Orleans and pick up a job yez 'ud be more used to. Go yez now to the cook's shanty and tell thim to give yez bread and mate; that'll stay by yez till ye make Baton Rouge, and then yez can get on a boat the night and be in New Orleans in the mornin'."
Ben thanked the kind hearted boss, and started down the levee with a big package of bread and "salt-horse" under his arm. He arrived at Baton Rouge, the former capital of the State of Louisiana, after dusk, and during the evening, crawled in among the cotton-bales of a Yazoo River stern-wheel freight-boat. No one was on the lookout for passengers, as the boat carried none, so he was left undisturbed, and soon fell into a sound sleep.
Daylight was beaming upon him when he was awakened by a rough shake.
"Git up boss, git up. We muss have dis yere bale ob cotton!"
He awoke to find the boat stopped, and a gang of black long-shore men unloading her.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Whare are yere? Why yere at New Orl'ns, ob course!"
New Orleans!
The tramp was done!
The wager won!
New Orleans!