Gideon's Band Part 19

While the talk thus flowed, what delicacies--pastries, ices, fruits--had come in and served their ends! But also against what sounds from the underworld had each utterance still to make headway: commands and threats and cries of defiance and rage, faint but intense, and which all at once ceased at the crack of a shot! The judge's sister let out a soft note of affright and looked here and there for explanation. In vain. The Vicksburg merchant lightly spoke across the table:

"Shooting alligators, bishop?"

"Oh!" broke in the judge's sister, aggrieved, "that was for no alligator." She appealed to a white-jacket bringing coffee: "Was that for an alligator?"

"I dunno'm. Mowt be a deer. Mowt be a b'ar."

His bashful smirk implied it might be none of the three. Ramsey looked at Hugh and Hugh said quietly to a boy at his back:

"Go, see what it is."

XXI

RAMSEY AND THE BISHOP

"High water like this," casually said the planter, next to Ramsey, "drives the big game out o' the swamps, where they use, and makes 'em foolish."

"Yes," said the bishop. "You know, d.i.c.k"--for he and the planter were old acquaintances--"not far from here, those long stretches of river a good mile wide, and how between them there are two or three short pieces where the sh.o.r.es are barely a quarter of a mile apart?"

"Yes," replied d.i.c.k and others.

"Well, last week, on my down trip, as we rounded a point in one of those narrow places, there, right out in mid-river, was a big buck, swimming across. Two swampers had spied him and were hot after him in a skiff."

"Oh," cried Ramsey, "I hope he got away!"

"Why, _I_ partly hoped he would," laughed the bishop, "and partly I hoped they'd get him."

"Characteristic," she heard the planter say to himself.

"And sure enough," the tale went on, "just as his forefeet hit the bank--" But there Hugh's messenger reappeared, and as Hugh listened to his murmured report the deer's historian avoided oblivion only by asking:

"Well, Mr. Courteney, after all, what was it?"

"Tell the bishop," said Hugh to the boy.

"'T'uz a man, suh," the servant announced, and when the ladies exclaimed he amended, "leas'wise a deckhan', suh."

"Thank Heaven!" thought several, not because it was a man but because the bells jingled again and the moving boat resumed her own blessed sounds. But the bishop was angry--too angry for table talk. He had his suspicions.

"Did deckhands make all that row?"

"Oh, no, suh; not in de beginnin', suh."

"Wasn't there trouble with the deck pa.s.sengers?"

"Ya.s.suh, at fus'; at fus', ya.s.suh; wid dem and dey young leadeh. Y'see, dey be'n so long aboa'd s.h.i.+p dey plumb stahve fo' gyahden-sa.s.s an'

'count o' de sickness de docto' won't 'low 'em on'y some sawts. But back yondeh on sho' dey's some wile mulbe'y trees hangin' low wid green mulbe'ys, an' comin' away f'om de grave dey make a break fo' 'em. But de mate he head' 'em off. An' whilse de leadeh he a-jawin' at de mate on sho', an' likewise at de clerk on de b'ileh deck an' at the cap'm on de roof----"

"In a foreign tongue," prompted the bishop, to whom that seemed the kernel of the offense.

"Ya.s.suh, I reckon so; in a fond tongue; ya.s.suh."

"About his sick not having proper food?" asked Ramsey.

"Ya.s.s'm--no'm--ya.s.s'm! An' whilse he a-jawin', some o' de crew think dey see a chance fo' to slip into de bresh an' leave de boat. An' when de mate whip' out his 'evolveh on 'em, an' one draw a knife on him, an' he make a dash fo' dat one, he--dat deckhan'--run aboa'd so fas' dat he ain't see whah he gwine tell it's too la-ate."

The bishop tightened his lips at Hugh and peered at the cabin-boy: "How was it too late?"

"De deckhan' he run ove'boa'd, suh."

The ladies flinched, the men frowned. "But," said the querist, "meantime the mate had fired, hmm? Did he--hit?"

"Dey don't know, suh. De deckhan' he neveh riz."

"Awful!" The bishop and Hugh looked steadily at each other. "So that also we owe to our aliens!"

"Yes," said Hugh.

"We don't," said Ramsey softly, yet heard by all.

Across the board Mrs. Gilmore said "Oh!" but in the next breath all but the judge's sister laughed, the bishop, as Hugh and he began to rise, laughing most.

"Wait," said Ramsey, laying a hand out to each and addressing Hugh. "How are those sick downstairs going to get the right food?"

The cabin-boy almost broke in but caught himself.

"Say it," said Hugh.

"Why, dem what already sick dey a-gitt'n' it. Ya.s.s'm, dey gitt'n' de boat's best. Madam Hayle and de cap'm dey done see to dat f'om de staht.

H-it's de well uns what needs he'p."

"But," said Ramsey, still to Hugh, "for sick or well--the right food--who pays for it?"

"The boat."

"Who pays the boat?" she asked, and suddenly, blus.h.i.+ng, saw her situation. Except the bishop and the judge's sister, who were conversing in undertone--except them and Hugh--the whole company, actually with here and there an elbow on the board, had turned to her in such bright expectancy as to give her a shock of encounter. But mirth upheld her, and leaning in over the table she s.h.i.+fted her question to the smiling bishop: "Who pays the boat?"

"The boat? Why--ha, ha!--that's the boat's lookout."

"It isn't," she laughed, but laughed so daintily and in a gayety so modestly self-justified that the group approved and the Vicksburg man asked her:

"Who ought to pay the boat?"

"We!" she cried. "All of us! It's in the Bible that we ought!" She looked again to the bishop. "Ain't it?"