第130章 THE KEEL BOAT(4)

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 we clutched the cabin's roof.A triumphant gleam was in Xavier's eyes, for he had hit the channel squarely.And then, like a monster out of the deep, the scaly, black back of a great northern pine was flung up beside us and sheered us across the channel until we were at the very edge of the foam-specked, spinning water.But Xavier saw it, and quick as lightning brought his helm over and laughed as he heard it crunching along our keel.And so we came swiftly around the bend and into safety once more.The next day there was the Petite Gulf, which bothered Xavier very little, and the day after that we came in sight of Natchez on her heights and guided our boat in amongst the others that lined the shore, scowled at by lounging Indians there, and eyed suspiciously by a hatchet-faced Spaniard in a tawdry uniform who represented his Majesty's customs.Here we stopped for a day and a night that Xavier and his crew might get properly drunk on tafia, while Nick and I walked about the town and waited until his Excellency, the commandant, had finished dinner that we might present our letters and obtain his passport.Natchez at that date was a sufficiently unkempt and evil place of dirty, ramshackle houses and gambling dens, where men of the four nations gamed and quarrelled and fought.We were glad enough to get away the following morning, Xavier somewhat saddened by the loss of thirty livres of which he had no memory, and Nick and myself relieved at having the passports in our pockets.I have mine yet among my papers.

``Natchez, 29 de Junio, de 1789.

``Concedo libre y seguro paeaporte a Don David Ritchie para que pase a la Nueva Orleans por Agna.Pido y encargo no se le ponga embarazo.''

A few days more and we were running between low shores which seemed to hold a dark enchantment.The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the dark forest of an evening.And the forest, --it seemed an impenetrable mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chene vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and twined in the mistletoe's death embrace; the dark cypress swamp with the conelike knees above the yellow back-waters; and here and there grew the bridelike magnolia which we had known in Kentucky, wafting its perfume over the waters, and wondrous flowers and vines and trees with French names that bring back the scene to me even now with a whiff of romance, bois d'arc, lilac, grande volaille (water-lily).Birds flew hither and thither (the names of every one of which Xavier knew),--the whistling papabot, the mournful bittern (garde-soleil), and the night-heron (grosbeck), who stood like a sentinel on the points.

One night I awoke with the sweat starting from my brow, trying to collect my senses, and I lay on my blanket listening to such plaintive and heart-rending cries as I had never known.Human cries they were, cries as of children in distress, and I rose to a sitting posture on the deck with my hair standing up straight, to discover Nick beside me in the same position.

``God have mercy on us,'' I heard him mutter, ``what's that? It sounds like the wail of all the babies since the world began.''

We listened together, and I can give no notion of the hideous mournfulness of the sound.We lay in a swampy little inlet, and the forest wall made a dark blur against the star-studded sky.There was a splash near the boat that made me clutch my legs, the wails ceased and began again with redoubled intensity.Nick and I leaped to our feet and stood staring, horrified, over the gunwale into the black water.Presently there was a laugh behind us, and we saw Xavier resting on his elbow.

``What devil-haunted place is this?'' demanded Nick.

``Ha, ha,'' said Xavier, shaking with unseemly mirth, ``you have never heard ze alligator sing, Michie?''

``Alligator!'' cried Nick; ``there are babies in the water, I tell you.''

``Ha, ha,'' laughed Xavier, flinging off his blanket and searching for his flint and tinder.He lighted a pine knot, and in the red pulsing flare we saw what seemed to be a dozen black logs floating on the surface.And then Xavier flung the cresset at them, fire and all.There was a lashing, a frightful howl from one of the logs, and the night's silence once more.

Often after that our slumbers were disturbed, and we would rise with maledictions in our mouths to fling the handiest thing at the serenaders.When we arose in the morning we would often see them by the dozens, basking in the shallows, with their wide mouths flapped open waiting for their prey.Sometimes we ran upon them in the water, where they looked like the rough-bark pine logs from the North, and Nick would have a shot at them.

When he hit one fairly there would be a leviathan-like roar and a churning of the river into suds.

At length there were signs that we were drifting out of the wilderness, and one morning we came in sight of a rich plantation with its dark orange trees and fields of indigo, with its wide-galleried manor-house in a grove.

And as we drifted we heard the negroes chanting at their work, the plaintive cadence of the strange song adding to the mystery of the scene.Here in truth was a new world, a land of peaceful customs, green and moist.The soft-toned bells of it seemed an expression of its life,--so far removed from our own striving and fighting existence in Kentucky.Here and there, between plantations, a belfry could be seen above the cluster of the little white village planted in the green; and when we went ashore amongst these simple French people they treated us with such gentle civility and kindness that we would fain have lingered there.The river had become a vast yellow lake, and often as we drifted of an evening the wail of a slave dance and monotonous beating of a tom-tom would float to us over the water.

At last, late one afternoon, we came in sight of that strange city which had filled our thoughts for many days.