Well, I caught my breath and almost fainted. Shut up on a dying ship with such a gang as that! But it weren’t no time to be feeling sorry for ourselves. We needed to find that boat now -- had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-shaking down the right side, and slow work it was, too -- seemed a week be- fore we got to the back of the ship. No sign of a boat.
Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any farther -- so scared he had almost no strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this ship we are in serious trouble, for sure. So on we went again. We headed for the back of the steering house, and found it, and then moved forward on the roof, hanging on from window to window, for the side of the roof was in the water.
When we got pretty close to the door to where the gang was, there was the boat, sure enough! I could just make her out in the darkness. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been into it, but just then the door opened. One of the men put his head out only about two foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he pulled it in again, and says:
"Cover that stupid lantern, Bill!"
He threw a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and sat down. It was Packard. Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice:
"All ready -- push off!"
I almost couldn’t hang on, I was so weak. But Bill says: "Hold on -- did you go through him?"
"No. Didn’t you?"
"No. So he’s still got his part of the money."
"Well, let's go; no use to take things and leave money."
"Say, won’t he know what we’re up to?"
"Maybe. But we got to have it anyway. Come along."
So they got out and went in.
The door shut loudly because it was on the side leaning in; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim come jumping after me. I cut the rope with my pocket-knife, and away we went!
We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak or whisper, or almost even breathe. We went moving along quietly and quickly, past the top of the big wheel that moves the boat, and past the back of it; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the ship, and the darkness covered her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.
When we was three or four hundred yards down the river we seen the lantern show like a little candle at the steering house door for a second, and we knowed by that that the robbers had missed their boat, and was starting to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.
Then Jim took the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the first time that I started to worry about the men. I think I hadn’t had time to before. I started to think how awful it was, even for killers, to be in such a way. I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a killer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim: "The first light we see we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a good hiding-place for you and the boat, and then I’ll go and make up some kind of a story, and get someone to go for that gang and get them out of there, so they can be hanged in the right way when their time comes."
But that plan never got started; for pretty soon it started to storm again, worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, I think. We raced down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept showing a little here and there, and by and by it showed us a black thing ahead, moving on the water, and we made for it.
It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get on it again. We seen a light now away down to the right, on the side of the river. So I said I would go for it. The boat was half full of things which that gang had robbed there on the ship. We pulled it onto the raft, and I told Jim to keep going down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two miles, and keep it burning until I come; then I got in the boat and headed for the light. As I got down toward it, three or four more showed -- up on a hill. It was a village. I reached land above the light, and put down my oars and let the river move me. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on a big ferry boat. I got out and looked around for the watchman. By and by I found him resting at the front of the boat, with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little pushes, and started to cry.
He waked up in a kind of surprised way; but when he seen it was only me he took a good look, and then he says: "Hello, what’s up? Don’t cry, boy. What’s the trouble?"
I says: "Pap, and mom, and my sister, and – "
Then I broke down crying out loud.
He says: "Oh, stop it now, don’t take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this one’ll come out all right. What’s the problem with them?"
"They’re -- they’re -- are you the watchman of the boat?"
"Yes," he says, kind of proud like. "I’m the driver and the owner and the watchman and the head helper; and sometimes I’m all that I carry too. I ain’t as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can’t be so very generous and good to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and throw around money the way he does; but I’ve told him many a time that I wouldn’t want to be him; for, says I, a sailing life’s the life for me, and I’d die before I’d live two mile out of town, where there ain’t nothing ever going on, not for all his money and as much more on top of it. Says I -- "I broke in and says:
"They’re in an awful lot of trouble, and -- "
"Who is?"
"Why, pap and mom and my sister and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your boat and go up there -- "
"Up where? Where are they?"
"On the broken ship."
"What broken ship?"
"Why, there ain’t but one."
"What, you don’t mean the Walter Scott?"
"Yes."
"Good land! What're they doing there, for the love of God?"
"Well, they didn’t go there a-planning to."
"I should think they didn’t! Why, great God, there ain’t no hope for them if they don’t get off mighty soon! Why, how in the world did they ever get into such a place?"
"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was visiting up there to the town -- "
"Yes, Booth’s Landing -- go on."
"She was a-visiting there at Booth’s Landing, and just about the time the sun was going down she started over with her servant woman in the horse ferry to stay all night at her friend’s house, Miss What-you-call-her -- can’t remember her name -- and they lost their steering oar, and the ferry turned around and went a-moving down, back first, about two mile, and hit up against the broken ship, and the man driving the ferry and the servant woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she jumped onto the ship. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our flat-bottomed boat, and it was so dark we didn’t see the ship until we was right on it; and so we hit into it too. All of us was saved but Bill Whipple -- and oh, he was the best person! -- I almost wish it had been me, I do."
"My George! It’s the strangest thing I ever heard. And then what did you all do?"
"Well, we shouted and took on, but it’s so wide there we couldn’t make nobody hear. So pap said someone got to get to land and get help. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a try for it. Miss Hooker she said if I didn’t find help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he’d fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below, and been trying ever since to get people to do something, but they said, ‘What, on such a night and in such a strong river? There ain’t no point in it; go for the ferry.’ Now if you’ll go and -- "
"By Jackson, I’d like to, and I don’t know but I will; but who in the world’s a-going to pay for it? Do you think your pap -- "
"Why that’s all right. Miss Hooker she told me, very clearly, that her uncle Hornback -- "
"Great guns! is he her uncle? Look here, you head for that light over there, and turn out west when you get there, and about four hundred yards out you’ll come to a pub; tell them to take you out to Jim Hornback’s, and he’ll pay them for it. And don’t you play around any, because he’ll want to know the news. Tell him I’ll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Get moving, now; I’m a-going up around the corner here to wake up my helper."
I started for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my boat and pulled up the side of the river in the easy water about six hundred yards, and moved myself in with some timber boats tied there; for I couldn’t rest easy until I could see the ferry boat start. But take it all around, I was feeling pretty comfortable because I had taken all this trouble for that gang, when not many would a done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these no-goods, because no-goods is the kind the widow and other good people takes the most interest in.
Well, before long here comes that broken ship, out in the dark, off the rocks moving down the river! A kind of cold shaking went through me, and then I headed out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there weren’t much hope for anyone being alive in her. I pulled all around her and shouted a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead quiet. I felt a little sad about the gang, but not much, for I thought if they could take it I could.
Then here comes the ferry boat; so I pushed out toward the middle of the river; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I put down my oars, and looked back and see the ferry go and smell around the ship looking for Miss Hooker’s body, because the owner would know her uncle Hornback would want it; and then pretty soon the ferry boat give it up and went back, and I returned to racing down the river.
It did seem a powerful long time before Jim’s light showed up; and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was starting to get a little grey in the east; so we stopped at an island, destroyed the boat, and put the raft in a good hiding place, then turned in and had a sleep like we were dead people.
