Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but, as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O’Rann, and uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero

  “—­took whisky punch
  Ivery night for his lunch,”

the captain put such a world of expression into a long-drawn sigh that Fred began to feel depressed himself; besides, songs were not numerous in Fred’s repertoire, and those in which there was no allusion to drinking could be counted on half his fingers.  Then he borrowed the barkeeper’s violin, and played the airs which had been his favorites in the days of his courtship, until Crayme exclaimed: 

“Say, Fred, we’re not playing church; give us something that don’t bring all of a fellow’s dead friends along with it.”

Fred reddened, swung his bow viciously, and dashed into “Natchez Under the Hill,” an old air which would have delighted Offenbach, but which will never appear in a collection of classical music.

“Ah! that’s something like music,” exclaimed Captain Crayme, as Fred paused suddenly to repair a broken string.  “I never hear that but I think of Wesley Treepoke, that used to run the Quitman; went afterward to the Rising Planet, when the Quitman’s owners put her on a new line as an opposition boat.  Wess and I used to work things so as to make Louisville at the same time—­he going up, I going down, and then turn about—­and we always had a glorious night of it, with one or two other lively boys that we’d pick up.  And Wess had a fireman that could fiddle off old ‘Natchez’ in a way that would just make a corpse dance till its teeth rattled, and that fireman would always be called in just as we’d got to the place where you can’t tell what sort of whisky ’tis you’re drinking; and I tell you, ’twas so heavenly that a fellow could forgive the last boat that beat him on the river, or stole a landing from him.  And such whisky as Wess kept! used to go cruising around the back country, sampling little lots run out of private stills.  He’d always find nectar, you’d better believe.  Poor old boy! the tremens took him off at last.  He hove his pilot overboard just before he died, and put a bullet into Pete Langston, his second clerk—­they were both trying to hold him, you see—­but they never laid it up against him.  I wish I knew what became of the whiskey he had on hand when he walked off—­no, I don’t either; what am I thinking about?  But I do, though—­hanged if I don’t!”

Fred grew pale:  he had heard of drunkards growing delirious upon ceasing to drink; he had heard of men who, in periods of aberration, were impelled by the motive of the last act or recollection which strongly impressed them; what if the captain should suddenly become delirious, and try to throw him overboard or shoot him?  Fred determined to get the captain at once upon the guards—­no, into the cabin, where there would be no sight of water to suggest anything dreadful—­and search his room for pistols.  But the captain objected to being moved into the cabin.