Gideon's Band Part 6

Ramsey all at once revived. "And did the _Shepherdess_ outrun the _Charioteer_?"

"A trifle, yes."

"Humph!" she said to herself, and twice again, on a higher key and with a grimace at Hugh, "humph!"

"But in 'twenty-five the _Charioteer_ was run into and sunk, and the Hayle boat that came next," continued the historian, "was the best ever seen till then on these waters, of the hundred and sixty-five steamers launched."

"Yes," said Madame Hayle, "and the firz' boat what my 'usband was captain."

Ramsey started wildly. "The _Admiral_!" she cried at Hugh. She whisked round on his grandfather. "And then--to beat the _Admiral_--you built----?"

"My son built--the _Abbess_."

"And did the _Abbess_ beat the _Admiral_?"

"Not for a long time. But in 'thirty-three the _Conqueror's_ very first run broke the _Abbess's_ record."

But madame was not to be outdone in generosity. "Ah, yes," she cried, "but that same day the _Quakerezz_ she beat the _Conqueror_!" At which the teased Ramsey, suddenly seeing that all this was but a roundabout peacemaking where she could discern no strife, laughed herself so limp that she all but tumbled into old Joy's lap.

"That's where we began!" she commented.

"True," said the old man to her mother, "but in 'thirty-eight came your husband's _Chevalier_----"

"Came--yes! only to get beat racing yo'"--the name eluded her----

"_Amba.s.sadress_," prompted Ramsey. "Everybody knows about that--'way back in the country--even the dates. The _Amba.s.sadress_ beat the _Chevalier_, the Autocrat beat the _Amba.s.sadress_, the _Empress_ beat the _Autocrat_, the _Regent_ beat the _Empress_, te tum, te tum, te tum!

Didn't the _Quakeress_ ever burn up, after all?"

"Ramsey----"

"Oh, well! this forever sitting silent! I----!"

"Ramsey!----"

X

PERIL

Ramsey clutched the old man's arm, pressed curls and brow against it, and laughed in a rillet of pure silver.

Hugh bore it, sitting silent, while the great boat, so humanly alive and aglow in every part, ceaselessly breathed above and quivered below, and the ruffling breeze as ceaselessly confirmed her unflagging speed. The mere "catalogue of the s.h.i.+ps" had lighted in him a secret glow that persisted. In his roused imagination the long pageant of the rival steamers still moved on through the rudely thronging, ever-multiplying fleet of the boundless valley's yearly swelling commerce, ocean-distant from all disparaging contrasts of riper empires; moved, yeasting, ruffling, through forty years of a civilization's genesis, each new boat, Hayle or Courteney, more beautifully capable than her newest senior, and each, in her time and degree, as cloud-white by day, as luminous by night, and as rife with human purpose and human hazards as this incomparable _Votaress_.

The girl's mirth faded. From behind the four a quiet tread drew near.

From another quarter came two other steps, lighter yet more a.s.sertive.

The one was John Courteney's; the two, that halted farther away, meant again the twins.

"Well, captain?" mildly said the grandfather.

"Well, commodore?" said the captain, declining his son's chair.

"Oh, good!" cried Ramsey, and rose with her nurse. "I didn't know anybody but my father was called commodore!"

"Yes," replied the captain, "my father too."

"Where've you been?" asked the fearless girl.

His answer was mainly to her mother: "I've been making myself acquainted in the ladies' cabin. This is no Hudson River boat, you know--whole trip in a day's jaunt."

"Ah, 'tis a voyage!" said madame.

"So it's well to know one's people," added he. He looked up into the night. "What a sky! Miss Ramsey, did you ever see, through a gla.s.s, the Golden Locks of Berenice?"

"The gold--" she began eagerly--"no-o! What are the golden--?" But there she checked, fell upon old Joy, and laughed whimperingly, "That's a dig at my red hair!"

One of the twins gravely accosted his mother, but she and the captain were laughing at Ramsey while the grandfather said: "My dear child, your hair is beautiful."

With face still hid on Joy's bosom, the girl shuffled her feet, then turned upon the old man and playfully intoned:

"I'm not a child!"

"Ramsey!" said the mother, and "Missie!" said the nurse.

"Hugh," said the captain, "suppose you take Miss Ramsey up to the pilot-house and show her the----"

The girl laid a hand on his arm. "Do you want to tell mom-a something you don't want me to hear?"

"Why--" began the captain, and laughed. "On second thought, no. I want to tell your mother and the commodore something before any one else can, and before I tell any one else; but you may hear it if----"

"If I won't get frightened. Has anything happened to the boat?"

"Ramsey!" "Missie!" lamented matron and servant again.

"Mother," with much dignity pleaded the twins.

"Oh, no," said the captain, "not to the boat."

"I want to stay and hear it," whined Ramsey, jerking up and down. "I won't get scared."

"'T'u'd be de fust time sence she wuz bawn ef she did," audibly mused the nurse, and Hugh said: "I believe that."

The girl stared round at him and then back at his father, her eyes wide with merriment. "No Ramsey to the pilot-house with him if he can help it!" she managed to say, and fell over her mother and nurse, down into her chair and across its arm, her laughter jingling like a basket of gla.s.s rolling down-stairs. Suddenly she hearkened. The captain was speaking to her mother:

"Must you reach Loui'ville as quickly as you can?"