Lady passengers took considerable notice of them, and were more successful than any one else at drawing them into conversation. The linguistic accomplishments of the Chums were not numerous, but it did one good to see Black lose his scared, furtive look when a lady addressed him, and to see the affectionate deference with which he appealed to Red, until that worthy was drawn into the conversation. When Black succeeded in this latter-named operation, he would, by insensible stages, draw himself away, and give himself up to enthusiastic admiration of his partner, or, apparently, of his conversational ability.
The Spring of 1869 found the Chums in the crew of the _Bennett_, "the peerless floating palace of the Mississippi," as she was called by those newspapers whose reporters had the freedom of the _Bennett's_ bar; and the same season saw the _Bennett_ staggering down the Mississippi with so heavy a load of sacked corn, that the gunwales amidships were fairly under water.
The river was very low, so the _Bennett_ kept carefully in the channel; but the channel of the great muddy ditch which drains half the Union is as fickle as disappointed lovers declare women to be, and it has no more respect for great steamer-loads of corn than Goliath had for David.
A little Ohio river-boat, bound upward, had reported the sudden disappearance of a woodyard a little way above Milliken's Bend, where the channel hugged the shore, and with the woodyard there had disappeared an enormous sycamore-tree, which had for years served as a tying-post for steamers.
As live sycamores are about as disinclined to float as bars of lead are, the captain and pilot of the _Bennett_ were somewhat concerned--for the sake of the corn--to know the exact location of the tree.
Half a mile from the spot it became evident, even to the passengers clustered forward on the cabin-deck, that the sycamore had remained quite near to its old home, for a long, rough ripple was seen directly across the line of the channel.
Then arose the question as to how much water was on top of the tree, and whether any bar had had time to accumulate.
The steamer was stopped, the engines were reversed and worked by hand to keep the _Bennett_ from drifting down-stream, a boat was lowered and manned, the Chums forming part of her crew, and the second officer went down to take soundings; while the passengers, to whom even so small a cause for excitement was a godsend, crowded the rail and stared.