The breakfast-bell rang again, and Hugh started down from the pilot-house. But Ramsey would ask the old woman one more question: "Is it happening to him, too?"

"Co'se, him; all o' us; twins an' all. When us brung Phyllis down de riveh yo' ma wuz dead ag'in sellin' heh, an' when us git win' dat de Co'teneys want' a nuss yo' pa he dat glad he snap his fingehs. 'Us'll rent Phyllis to 'em!' he say. 'Dey's Hendry Clay Whigs; dey'd ought to treat heh fine.' (Dat wuz his joke.) An' yo' ma make answeh: 'Ef dey don't, us kin take heh back! Betteh dat dan sell heh! n.o.body o' de Hayle blood shayn't do dat whils' I live.'"

Hugh was near. "Good morning!" sang Ramsey. They met at the head of a stair. She turned away and looked out beyond the jack-staff as radiantly as if she had just alighted on the planet. The chute was astern. A new reach of open water came, sun-gilt, to meet them, and on either hand the low, monotonous green sh.o.r.es crept southward a mile apart.

She faced again to Hugh. "Isn't this G.o.d's country?"

"In a way," the youth admitted with a scant smile.

She glanced about. "Most beautiful river in the world!" she urged, and when he faltered she cried: "Oh, you're prejudiced!" She turned half away. "I know one thing; I wouldn't let _my_ grandfather prejudice _me_."

A new thought struck her: "Oh!... I've just heard all about it!... And it helps to explain--you!"

He enjoyed the personality. "Heard all about what?"

"Phyllis!" She jerked up and down. His smile vanished; his lips set; he turned red.

Ramsey was even more taken aback than he or old Joy. She knew the pilot was looking down on her, the mate glancing back at her. Yet she laughed and prattled and all at once frowningly said: "But one thing I just can't make out! What on earth had the _Hayle blood_ to do with any right or wrong of selling Phyllis? Do you know?"

Hugh reddened worse, and in that instant, outblushing him, she saw the truth. "Never mind!" she cried. "Oh, did I stop you? Go on!--I--I mean go on down--to breakfast!"

"Won't you go first?"

"No, thank you; go on! Please, go on!" Glancing up to the pilot and catching his amused eye, she pointed distantly ahead. "What is that high bank on the--the stabboard sh.o.r.e?" she asked him.

"Why"--his tobacco caused but a moment's delay--"nothing much. They call that Port Hudson."

"Thank you!" She darted below, where Hugh was already gone. As she started she caught sight of the twins. They had just come up on the far side of the boat and were approaching the mate. Still flushed, but straight as a dart, at the stair's foot she turned on her attendant and with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes said softly: "I don't want any breakfast. I'm going to the lower deck--to find mom-a."

"You shayn't! You'll git de cholera!"

"Pooh, the cholera!--after what I've got!--I'm going to tell mom-a on you!"

"On me--me! Good Lawd! Go on, I's wid you!"

"You'd no right to tell me that story!"

"Missie, I on'y tol' you fo' to stop you. You said yo'se'f you gwine ax him all about it."

"Oh, him!" The girl laughed, yet showed new tears. "I don't mind him; I mind the story! I don't even care who it's about, Hayles or no Hayles!"

"Why, den, what does you care----?"

"I care _what_ it's about." She suddenly looked older. "Oh, I'm all over bespattered with the horrid----"

"Y'ain't. Y'ain't de sawt fo' dat. Look at yo' ma. She have bofe han's in it. Is she all oveh bespattud?"

"Oh, you! You know nothing could ever bespatter mom-a!... I'm going to her to get clean!"

"Dat's good!" A shrewd elation lit up the black face. "Go on! As you say yo'se'f, go on!"

Ramsey started away but with an overjoyed gasp found herself in her mother's arms. She pressed closer while the three laughed, and when the other two ceased she still mirthfully clung in that impregnable sanctuary. Suddenly she hearkened, tossed her curls, and stood very straight. Two male voices were coming down the stairs.

"We cannot," said one, "submit to this alive!"

"Yes," said the other, "we can. It's just _we who_ can--till the day we catch them where they've got us to-day!"

"And what, now, is this?" smilingly inquired Madame Hayle as her twin sons halted before her.

The young men uncovered. They were surprisingly presentable after the night they had spent. Julian, in particular, looked capable and proud of their waywardness.

"Good morning," put in Ramsey, on her mother's arm. "See those little houses up on that bank? That's Port Hudson. Up there they can see away down the river, past Prophet's Island, and at the same time away up-stream. If we were on the hurric--" She made a start, but her mother, while addressing the twins, restrained her.

"Well," she asked, "you cannot submit--to what?"

"We are ordered ash.o.r.e!" said Julian.

"At the next landing!" quavered Lucian--"Bayou Sara!"

Ramsey slipped from her mother and gazed at the twins with her eyes as large as theirs. "You shan't go!" she broke in. "Where's Hugh?" She darted for the cabin, old Joy following. Julian glared after them.

"See?" he said to his mother. "You don't see--the plot? It's a plot!--to compromise us!--you and her included!"

"Before this boat-load of witnesses!" chimed Lucian.

Him the mother waved to a remote chair. "Bring me that," she said, for a pretext, and turned privately to Julian, speaking too swiftly for him to reply: "Was it part of that plot that you was both on that lower deck laz' night? No? But in the city those laz' two-three day' in how many strenge place' you was--lower deck of the whole worl'--G.o.d only know', eh?--unless maybe also the devil--an' the scavenger? That was likewise part of that plot aggains' us? No? But anny'ow that comity of seven--h-ah!"--she made a wry face--"that was cause' by the wicked plotting of those Courteney'? An' that diztrac' you so bad this morning that you 'ave not notiz' even that change' face on yo' brotheh?--or that change' voice, eh? An' him he's too affraid to tell you how he's feeling bad! As faz' as you can, take him--to his room--his bed--an' say you, both, some prayers. He's G.o.dd the cholera."

XVIII

RAMSEY WINS A POINT OR TWO

There was half an hour yet before the first mate's watch would end.

He had risen from the captain's seat on the approach of that middle-aged pair who in the first hour of the voyage had enjoyed seeing Hugh and Ramsey together; a couple whose home evidently was far elsewhere--if anywhere--and who as evidently had seen the world to better advantage than most of the _Votaress's_ pa.s.sengers. As he rose Hugh and Ramsey came up near one of the wheels. Seeing them start directly for him, he made a heavy show of attention to the married pair.

While the quick step of the two younger people brought them near, the husband began to reply to the mate: "Why, to the common eye, tiresome, I dare say. To the artist--I wonder! It's the only much-travelled river in the world whose most imposing sight is always the boat."

"It isn't!" whispered Ramsey to Hugh. Then openly, yet decorously, "Ahem!" she said as they lapsed into waiting att.i.tudes. But the mate was not to be ahemmed, and while he hearkened on to the critic she could do no better than hammer the small of her back and smooth into it a further perfection.

"At the same time," continued the stranger, "it's immensely interesting; politically as to its future, scientifically as to its past." He turned to his wife: "Look, for instance, at this bit of it right here." A trained art in his pose and gesture caused Ramsey and old Joy to look as he prompted. "This is Fausse Riviere Cut-off," he continued, and the mate said it was--'False River'.

"Yes. Now, barely two generations ago"--he animatedly took Ramsey into his glance--"this stream suddenly abandoned twenty-odd miles of its own tremendous length and width and sprang through this two-mile cut-off."

There was such fervor in his tone, and in his wife's mien such vivacity of interest, that the amazing event stood before Ramsey as if it had just occurred.