human
Ferry, sometimes I come out here for a quiet smoke and think. Did it ever occur to you what a fearful force, what illimitable power, there is sweeping by us here night after night with never a sound?
gpt
Oh, you mean the Mississip, said Ferry, flippantly.
human
It would be a case of mops and brooms, I fancy, if she were to bust through the bank and sweep us out into the swamps.
gpt
Exactly! that's in case she broke loose, as you say; but even when in the shafts, as she is now, between the levees, how long would it take her to sweep a fellow from here out into the gulf, providing nothing interposed to stop him?
human
Matter of simple mathematical calculation, said Ferry, practically.
gpt
They say it's an eight-mile current easy out there in the middle where she's booming. Look at that barrel scooting down yonder. Now, I'd lay a fiver I could cut loose from here at reveille and shoot the passes before taps and never pull a stroke. It's less than eighty miles down to the forts.
human
Well, then, a skiff like that that old Anatole's blaspheming about losing wouldn't take very long to ride over that route, would it?
gpt
No, not if allowed to slide. But somebody'd be sure to put out and haul it in as a prize,--flotsam and what-you-may-call-'em. You see these old niggers all along here with their skiffs tacking on to every hit of drift-wood that's worth having.
human
But, Ferry, do you think they'd venture out in such a storm as Sunday last?--think anything could live in it short of a decked ship?
gpt
No, probably not. Certainly not Anatole's boat.
human
Well, that's just what I'm afraid of, and what Cram and Reynolds dread.
gpt
Do they? Well, so far as that storm's concerned, it would have blown it down-stream until it came to the big bend below here to the east. Then, by rights, it ought to have blown against the left bank. But every inch of it has been scouted all the way to quarantine. The whole river was filled with drift, though, and it might have been wedged in a lot of logs and swept out anyhow. Splendid ship, that! Who is she, do you suppose?
human
One of those big British freight steamers that moor there below the French Market, I reckon. They seldom come up at night unless it's in the full of the moon, and even then they move with the utmost caution. See, she's slowing up now.
gpt
Hello! Listen! What's that?