The boats were passing widely apart, and
when it came only memory made its foolish lines plain to his doting ear:
"Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
Nex' come de hoss and den de flea,
De camomile and de bumblebee.
Do you belong to Gideon's Band?
. . . . . . . .
Fight'n' fo' yo' home!"
On the last line the singers were half a mile downstream, in Raccourci
Cut-off, and Ramsey and the _Votaress_ were well started up the ten-mile
reach from Red River Landing to Fort Adams.
How swiftly and incessantly the scene changed. Down in a stateroom near
the boiler deck some beginner on the horn was dejectedly playing "A Life
on the Ocean Wave," but even with pestilence aboard and a brother
stricken with it what an exalted, exalting life was a life on this
mighty stream! Flat lands? Flat waters? It was the highest, widest
outlook into the world of nature and of man she had ever had.
Monotonous?--when one felt oneself a year older to-day than yesterday
and growing half a month's growth every hour? In yesterday's
childishness she had begun at Post Forty-six to keep count of all the
timber rafts and flatboats met, and here in this long stretch came three
more of the one and five of the other, with men hurrahing to her from
them--men as wild as the wilderness, yet with homes and families away
back up the great tributaries and their tributaries.
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