"Well, by thunder!" exclaimed the captain, when he recovered his breath; "if that isn't the best thing I ever heard yet! The idea of a steamboat captain swearing off his whisky! Say, Fred, don't you want me to join the Church? I forgot that you'd married a preacher's daughter, or I wouldn't have been so puzzled over your white face to-day. Sam Crayme brought down to cold water! Wouldn't the boys along the river get up a sweet lot of names for me--the 'Cold-water Captain,' 'Psalm-singing Sammy!' and then, when an editor or any other visitor came aboard, _wouldn't_ I look the thing, hauling out glasses and a pitcher of water!

Say, Fred, does your wife let you drink tea and coffee?"

"Sam!" exclaimed Fred, springing to his feet, "if you don't stop slanting at my wife, I'll knock you down."

"Good!" said the captain, without exhibiting any signs of trepidation.

"_Now_ you talk like yourself again. I beg your pardon, old fellow; you know I was only joking, but it _is_ too funny. You'll have to take a trip or two with me again, though, and be reformed."

"Not any," said Fred, resuming his chair; "take your wife along, and reform yourself."

"Look here, now, young man," said the captain, "_you're_ cracking on too much steam. Honestly, Fred, I've kept a sharp eye on you for two or three months, and I am right glad you can let whisky alone. I've seen times when I wished I were in your boots; but steamboats can't be run without liquor, however it may be with woolen mills."

"That's all nonsense," said Fred. "You get trade because you run your boat on time, charge fair prices, and deliver your freight in good order. Who gives you business because you drink and treat?"

The captain, being unable to recall any shipper of the class alluded to by Fred, changed his course.

"'Tisn't so much that," said he; "it's a question of reputation. How would I feel to go ashore at Pittsburgh or Louisville or Cincinnati, and refuse to drink with anybody? Why, 'twould ruin me. It's different with you who don't have to meet anybody but religious old farmers. Besides, you've just been married."

"And you've been married for five years," said Fred, with a sudden sense of help at hand. "How do you suppose _your_ wife feels?"

Captain Crayme's jollity subsided a little, but with only a little hesitation he replied:

"Oh! she's used to it; she doesn't mind it."

"You're the only person in town that thinks so, Sam," said Fred.

Captain Crayme got up and paced his little stateroom two or three times, with a face full of uncertainty. At last he replied:

"Well, between old friends, Fred, I don't think so very strongly myself.

Hang it! I wish I'd been brought up a preacher, or something of the kind, so I wouldn't have had business ruining my chances of being the right sort of a family man. Emily _don't_ like my drinking, and I've promised to look up some other business; but 'tisn't easy to get out of steamboating when you've got a good boat and a first-rate trade. Once she felt so awfully about it that I _did_ swear off--don't tell anybody, for God's sake! but I did. I had to look out for my character along the river, though; so I swore off on the sly, and played sick. I'd give my orders to the mates and clerks from my bed in here, and then I'd lock myself in, and read novels and the Bible to keep from thinking.

'Twas awful dry work all around; but 'whole hog or none' is _my_ style, you know. There was fun in it, though, to think of doing something that no other captain on the river ever did. But thunder! by the time night came, I was so tired of loafing that I wrapped a blanket around my head and shoulders, like a Hoosier, sneaked out the outer door here, and walked the guards, between towns; but I was so frightened for fear some one would know me that the walk did me more harm than good. And blue!

why a whole cargo of indigo would have looked like a snowstorm alongside of my feelings the second day; 'pon my word, Fred, I caught myself crying in the afternoon, just before dark, and I couldn't find out what for, either. I tell _you_ I was scared, and things got worse as time spun along; the dreams I had that night made me howl, and I felt worse yet when daylight came along again. Toward the next night I was just afraid to go to sleep; so I made up my mind to get well, go on duty, and dodge everybody that it seemed I ought to drink with. Why, the Lord bless your soul! the first time we shoved off from a town I walked up to the bar just as I always did after leaving towns; the barkeeper set out my particular bottle naturally enough, knowing nothing about my little game; I poured my couple of fingers, and dropped it down as innocent as a lamb before I knew what I was doing. By George! my boy, 'twas like-opening the lock-gates; I was just heavenly gay before morning.

There was one good thing about it, though--I never told Emily I was going to swear off; I was going to surprise her, so I had the disappointment all to myself. Maybe she isn't as happy as your wife; but whatever else I've done, or not done, I've never lied to her."

"It's a pity you hadn't promised _her_ then, before you tried your experiment," said Fred. The captain shook his head gravely, and replied:

"I guess not; why, I'd have either killed somebody or killed myself if I'd gone on a day or two longer. I s'pose I'd have got along better if I'd had anybody to keep me company, or reason with me like a schoolmaster; but I hadn't. I didn't know anybody that I dared trust with a secret like that."

"_I_ hadn't reformed then, eh?" queried Fred.

"You? why you're one of the very fellows I dodged! Just as I got aboard the boat--I came down late, on purpose--I saw you out aft. I tell you, I was under my blankets, with a towel wrapped around my jaw, in about one minute, and was just _a-praying_ that you hadn't seen me come aboard."

Fred laughed, but his laughter soon made place for a look of tender solicitude. The unexpected turn that had been reached in the conversation he had so dreaded, and the sympathy which had been awakened in him by Crayme's confidence and openness, temporarily made of Fred Macdonald a man with whom Fred himself had never before been acquainted.

A sudden idea struck him.

"Sam," said he, "try it over again, and _I'll_ stay by you. I'll nurse you, crack jokes, fight off the blues for you, keep your friends away.

I'll even break your neck for you, if you like, seeing it's you, if it'll keep you straight."

"Will you, though?" said the captain, with a look of admiration, undisguised except by wonder. "You're the first friend I ever had, then.

By thunder! how marrying Ettie Wedgewell _did_ improve you, Fred! But,"

and the captain's face lengthened again, "there's a fellow's reputation to be considered, and where'll mine be after it gets around that I've sworn off?"

"Reputation be hanged!" exclaimed Fred. "_Lose_ it, for your wife's sake. Besides, you'll _make_ reputation instead of lose it: you'll be as famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave--the only thing of the kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I've bet you a hundred that you can't stay off your liquor for a year, and that, you're not the man to take a dare."

"_That_ sounds like business," exclaimed the captain springing to his feet.

"Let me draw up a pledge," said Fred, eagerly, drawing, pen and ink toward him.

"No, you don't, my boy," said the captain, gently, and pushing Fred out of the room and upon the guards. "Emily shall do that. Below there!--Perkins, I've got to go uptown for an hour; see if you can't pick up freight to pay laying-up expenses somehow. Fred, go home and get your traps; 'How's the accepted time,' as your father-in-law has dinged at me, many a Sunday, from the pulpit."

As Sam Crayne strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whisky which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at full speed upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass he burst into his own house, threw his arm around his wife with more than ordinary tenderness, and then looking into her eyes with a daring born of utter desperation, said:

"Emily, I came back to sign the strongest temperance-pledge that you can possibly draw up; Fred Macdonald wanted to write out one, but I told him that nobody but you should do it; you've earned the right to, poor girl." No such duty and surprise having ever before come hand-in-hand to Mrs. Crayme, she acted as every true woman will imagine that she herself would have done under similar circumstances, and this action made it not so easy as it might otherwise have been to see just where the pen and ink were, or to prevent the precious document, when completed, from being disfigured by peculiar blots which were neither fingermarks nor ink-spots, yet which in shape and size suggested both of these indications of unneatness. Mrs. Crayme was not an adept at literary composition, and, being conscious of her own deficiency, she begged that a verbal pledge might be substituted; but her husband was firm.

"A contract won't steer worth a cent unless it's in writing, Emily,"

said he, looking over his wife's shoulder as she wrote. "Gracious, girl, you're making it too thin; _any_ greenhorn could sail right through that and all around it. Here, let _me_ have it." And Crayme wrote, dictating aloud to himself as he did so, "And the--party--of the first part--hereby agrees to--do everything--else that the--spirit of this--agreement--seems to the party--of the second--part to--indicate or--imply." This he read over to his wife, saying:

"That's the way we fix contracts that aren't ship-shape, Emily; a steamboat couldn't be run in any other way." Then Crayme wrote at the foot of the paper, "Sam Crayme, Capt. Str. _Excellence_" surveyed the document with evident pride, and handed it to his wife, saying:

"Now, you see, you've got me so I can't ever get out of it by trying to make out that 'twas some other Sam Crayme that you reformed."

"Oh husband!" said Mrs. Crayme, throwing her arms about the captain's neck, "_don't_ talk in that dreadful business way! I'm too happy to bear it. I want to go with you on this trip."

The captain shrank away from his wife's arms, and a cold perspiration started all over him as he exclaimed:

"Oh, don't, little girl! Wait till next trip. There's an unpleasant set of passengers aboard; the barometer points to rainy weather, so you'd have to stay in the cabin all the time; our cook is sick, and his cubs serve up the most infernal messes; we're light of freight, and have got to stop at every warehouse on the river, and the old boat'll be either shrieking, or bumping, or blowing off steam the whole continual time."

Mrs. Crayme's happiness had been frightening some of her years away, and her smile carried Sam himself back to his pre-marital period as she said:

"Never mind the rest; I see you don't want me to go," and then she became Mrs. Crayme again as she said, pressing her face closely to her husband's breast, "but I hope you won't get _any_ freight, _anywhere_, so you can get home all the sooner."

Then the captain called on Dr. White, and announced such a collection of symptoms that the doctor grew alarmed, insisted on absolute quiet, and conveyed Crayme in his own carriage to the boat, saw him into his berth, and gave to Fred Macdonald a multitude of directions and cautions, the sober recording of which upon paper was of great service in saving Fred from suffering over the Quixotic aspect which the whole project had begun, in his mind, to take on. He felt ashamed even to look squarely into Crayme's eye, and his mind was greatly relieved when the captain turned his face to the wall and exclaimed:

"Fred, for goodness' sake get out of here; I feel enough like a baby now, without having a nurse alongside. I'll do well enough for a few hours; just look in once in a while."

During the first day of the trip, Crayme made no trouble for himself or Fred; under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a two-hour chat, which was alternately humorous, business-like, and retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor after the sympathizers had departed. On the second night the captain was restless, and the two men played cards. On the third day the captain's physique reached the bottom of its stock of patience, and protested indignantly at the withdrawal of its customary stimulus; and it acted with more consistency, though no less ugliness, than the human mind does when under excitement and destitute of control. The captain grew terribly despondent, and Fred found ample use for all the good stories he knew.

Some of these amused the captain greatly, but after one of them he sighed.

"Poor old Billy Hockess told me that the only time I ever heard it before, and _didn't_ we have a glorious time that night! He'd just put all his money into the _Yenesei_--that blew up and took him with it only a year afterward--and he gave us a new kind of punch he'd got the hang of when he went East for the boat's carpets. 'Twas made of two bottles of brandy, one whisky, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in curacoa and honey for a month. It looks kind of weak when you think about it, but there were only six of us in the party, and it went to the spot by the time we got through. Golly, but didn't we make Rome howl that night!"

Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but, as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O'Rann, and uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero

"--took whisky punch Ivery night for his lunch,"

the captain put such a world of expression into a long-drawn sigh that Fred began to feel depressed himself; besides, songs were not numerous in Fred's repertoire, and those in which there was no allusion to drinking could be counted on half his fingers. Then he borrowed the barkeeper's violin, and played the airs which had been his favorites in the days of his courtship, until Crayme exclaimed:

"Say, Fred, we're not playing church; give us something that don't bring all of a fellow's dead friends along with it."

Fred reddened, swung his bow viciously, and dashed into "Natchez Under the Hill," an old air which would have delighted Offenbach, but which will never appear in a collection of classical music.