CHAPTER XXVIII.

WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.

The steady beat of the wheels and the incessant clank of the engines went on as usual.  The boat was loaded almost to her guards, and did not make much speed.  The wheels kept their persistent beat upon the water, and the engines kept their rhythmical clangor going, until August found himself getting drowsy.  Trouble, with forced inaction, nearly always has a soporific tendency, and a continuous noise is favorable to sleep.  Once or twice August roused himself to a sense of his responsibility and battled with his heaviness.  It was nearing the end of his watch, for the dog-watch of two hours set in at four o’clock.  But it seemed to him that four o’clock would never come.

An incident occurred just at this moment that helped him to keep his eyes open.  A man went aft through the engine-room with a red handkerchief tied round his forehead.  In spite of this partial disguise August perceived that it was Parkins.  He passed through to the place where the steerage or deck passengers are, and then disappeared from August’s sight.  He had meant to disembark at a wood-yard just below Paducah, but for some reason the boat did not stop, and now, as August guessed, he was hiding himself from Paducah eyes.  He was not much too soon, for the great bell on the hurricane-deck was already ringing for Paducah, and the summer dawn was showing itself faintly through the river fog.

The alarm-bell rang in the engine-room, and Wehle stood by his engine.  Then the bell rang to stop the starboard engine, and August obeyed it.  The pilot of a Western steamboat depends much upon his engines for steerage in making a landing, and the larboard engine was kept running a while longer in order to bring the deeply-loaded boat round to her landing at the primitive wharf-boat of that day.  There is something fine in the faith with which an engineer obeys the bell of the pilot, not knowing what may be ahead, not inquiring what may be the effect of the order, but only doing exactly what he is bid when he is bid.  August had stopped his engine, and stood trying to keep his mind off Parkins and the events of the night, that he might be ready to obey the next signal for his engine.  But the bell rang next to stop the other engine, at which the second engineer stood, and August was so free from responsibility in regard to that that he hardly noticed the sound of the bell, until it rang a second time more violently.  Then he observed that the larboard engine still ran.  Was Munson dead or asleep?  Clearly it was August’s duty to stand by his own engine.  But then he was startled to think what damage to property or life might take place from the failure of the second engineer to stop his engine.  While he hesitated, and all these considerations flashed through his mind, the pilot’s bell rang again long and loud, and August then, obeying an impulse rather than a conviction, ran over to the other engine,