Windham County reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1901-1906, 1903-01-30
CHAPTER XIII.

a FINALE hAhbOhs
MINDLESS swell and a. burning SIX
. Ahead broken palings of mop headed tr,
, trunks growing straight across the Sc
/ On one beam scattered patches Of viii
? where the surf crumbled over hidden cor,
reef, on the other the bright blue watt
Of the Mexican gulf, with its yellow floa
Ing tangles of weed. A steamer lungin
through the rollers ut small six knots
! On her decks was visible one man, an
; one alone, and he was on the upper bridge
with his fists on the spokes Of the steaI
steering wheel. He was swaying wit
WEAKNESS; his eyes were dull and leaden
his cheeks were Of an unwholesome yellow
because the tan would not let them turf
pale white. Yet his task was one whicl
put to strain every piece Of his alertness
He was taking steamer drawing ~ fee
through a channel whose very existenc,
no man on earth besides himself had eve
guessed, and already he was deep in ses
territory which the charts Of 1898 still
mark as unsurveyed. He had vaguely
found the channel some months before In
an open boat and written cross compass
bearings on the back Of crumplsd envel
ope. These he carried in his head now
and used as the sea marks closed, but they
were frail reed for much dependence.
For such work leadsman is an abso-
Lutte necessity, and on board the Port
Edes a leadsman was an absolute impossi-
billty. The remaining two of her man
ming were working as ten men to keep up
any head of steam for her engines And
so Patrick Cambel took his soundings
with eye and nostrils, as do some of the
more ancient of the coaster folk, and In
stinct did not, upon the whole, serve him
badly. Twice he secured the steamers
bottom plates over branching coral plants,
which broke away with Gathering jars and
let her through to deeper water beyond,
and once he ran upon tail of white sand,
which pinned her just forward Of mid
ships But he rung off the engines, waited
till the scream Of the escape pipe showed
a full head of steam and then on flowing
tide put her full speed astern and slid
clear.
The skipper In the stokehold below
waxed blasphemous at the man who had
got the shore on board" but he did not
cease from shoveling Goals. Neither did
the big donkeyman, save at those mo-
ments when the clang Of the telegraph
bell called him to stand by the throttle OF
reversing gear in the engine room.
So the Port Edes drew up this narrow
unknown sea river through the shadows
which fill that blight of the southwest
Floridian coast, and the tired man who
was governin her steered every hour with
stronger conf lence and duler conscious.
ness. Now he held on to what was ap-
parently an unbroken line Of sand, where,
II the steamer stuck, she would be
stove in wreck within the hour, but as she
closed with Il passage opened out which
took her through in clear water, although
the yeasty surges of the backwash would
cap like live things far up her sides and
scream and below through the scuppers
Now he lodged, with helm hard starboard
me minute, hard To port the next among
IN archipelago Of unnamed keys, where
he 1irst mangrove trees were getting to
work at building these outlying scraps OF
Inimal stone into part of the North Amer
can continent.
Beyond was broad, smooth lagoon
in the sunlight, dancing with
title silver waves, and beyond again was
wall Of woodwork growing in one solid
mass of trunks from behind the tangle OF
limy mangl ives which sprawled along ,
he waters edge. Bare land was to be ,
cen nowhere. All was blotted out by the {
ank luxuriance of the subtropical fora. ,
The steamer held on her course athwart 4
his placid sea lake, aiming straight as a
life shot for what appeared to be the e
ensest part of the forest But as she 9
cared an overlapping cape gradually dis q
nguished itself from the rest of the &
and directly afterward banks OF t
lilky sand sprang out, with gut of l
yer between them. s
Cambel steered on, sitting upon the t
rating now and holding the wheel one Il
inded by the lower spokes. and in the s.
t, hot stew of the stokehold below ket- y
o and the donkeyman shoveled coal to a
e light of reeking slush lamps and the a
me of furnace roar. a
The steamer in the grip of the river II
ream swung round the hights and twist
gs, finding deep water everywhere, v
ough often she could not make the turn Il
lickly enough and bruised with her N
refoot the Shiny mangrove stems which "
arked the bank But the current was a.
'ong and each time swept her clear, and st
ose below were scarcely conscious of the pc
aze. ca
Knot by knot the brine Of the Mexican Il
III was being left behind, and the noises W
swamps were closing in on them. The sa
ell fanning out from the steamers LEI
Ike wet the alligators in their basking Y
ices behind the sawgrass, and the reek le'
I'M her smokestacks scared the silt leg tw
water fowl afish in the shadows She by
lsted round bayou of black waite,
He'd in by stern ranks of cypress trees. an
@ cut across another with graceful leav ire
palmetto scrubbed on either hand and m;
'ged cabbage palms spouting out from die
we. AND then she swung again wherl i've
river forked and steamed down of
iight, answering water lane which led pla
he very heart of the Everglades. an,
'ut the pace was slowing now, slowing I'M
eed TIL the steamer would hardly stee.
inst the current, which ever and amor len
oped her by the head or the tail anC VIII
ried her with sullen sheerings deat eye
o mangrove cluster or tree clad bluff =
the reason was that the head of steam bo-
failing. Captain Owen Kettle, like ~
% Christian men have done before, ic- the
ed his own previous preachings when gov
application came in and proved only bet
nan soon after he had taken up the role she
reman. Driven half lunatic by the heat gon
he work, he kept dipping his lips in leat
water bucket and drinking heavy and
is. AS consequence that unpoet- cut
complaint-cramp in the stomach .
took him at last and tied him into by I
e ungainly knots of torture which h. SOS
SO frequently observed upon scientific We
in others. But as there was none IT of Il
1 to administer the heroic remedy Of o s.
rodyne cum rhubarb cum laudanum they
pill and give him something else u mar
about in the original kind of knots full
smained no Il