She was smoking vigorously on the day that we bade good-bye to Chippoak Creek.  That was a glorious morning—­one of those mornings when the sun tries to warm the northwest wind and the northwest wind tries to chill the sun, and between the two a tonic gets into the air and people want to do things.  We wanted to “see the wheels go round” (not knowing then that only one would go round); and we prepared to start for Kittewan Creek, a few miles farther up the James.

Kittewan Creek is no place in particular, but near it are two old plantations that historians and story-writers have talked a good deal about.  These two estates, Weyanoke and Fleur de Hundred, having no longer pretentious colonial mansions, are often overlooked by the traveller on the James, who thereby loses a worthy chapter of the river story.

When our anchors came up out of the friendly mud of Chippoak Creek, we let the northwest wind push us across the flats and into the channel.  Then we summoned the engines to do their duty.  The port one responded promptly, but the other would do nothing; and as we ran out of the creek and headed up the river, the Commodore was appealing to the obdurate machine with a screwdriver and a monkey-wrench.

The tide was hurrying up-stream and the wind was hurrying down-stream, and old Powhatan was much troubled.  Gadabout rolled awkwardly among the white-caps but continued to make headway.  Pocahontas, the big river steamer, was coming down-stream.  We could see her making a landing at a wharf above us where a little mill puffed away and a barge was loading.  Evidently, the steamer was to stop next at a landing that we were just passing, for there men and mules were hurrying to get ready for her.  Now the starboard bank of the river grew high and sightly, but on the port side there was only a great waste of marsh.

The Commodore spent much time with the ailing motor.  Once he lost a portion of the creature’s anatomy in the bottom of the boat.  Nautica found him, inverted and full of emotion, fishing about in the bilge-water for the lost piece.  She offered him everything from the toasting-rack to the pancake-turner to scrape about with; but he would trust nothing of the sort, and kept searching until he found the piece with his own black, oily fingers.

“I believe the man that built this boat was a prophet!” he exclaimed as his face, flushed with triumph and congestion, appeared above the floor.  “He said that if we put gasoline motors in, we should have more fun and more trouble than we ever had in our lives before; and we surely are getting all he promised.”

[Illustration:  Sturgeon point landing.]

[Illustration:  At the mouth of Kittewan creek.]

As we rounded the next bend in the river, we got the full force of the wind and, with but one engine running, it was a question for a while whether we were going to go on up the river or to drift back down stream.  Fortunately, the James narrowed at this point, thus increasing the sweep of the tide that was helping us along, and slowly Gadabout pushed on, slapping down hard on the big waves and holding steady.