“They would never stop for you,” she, said.  “You are only a boy, and they would know ’twas only mischief.”

His reply was as before.  He would lay five dollars on it that he could stop the boat.

She incited him to do this thing also.  What faculty of caution the boy possessed was not as yet developed; he left the care for consequences to the sedate lady in the stern, and forgetting his quest of the Missouri shore, lay in the path of the steam-boat and howled unmusically, and marred the peace of the placid morning by shouting concerning a runaway slave and a fabulous reward that was offered for him taken alive or dead.

It is probable that what he said never rightly reached the ears of the men on the deck, but that they regarded the lady as a possible passenger; the engine was stopped.

“We’d better cut now as fast as we can,” said the boy, somewhat frightened.  He seized his oars excitedly.  “Or shall I tell them a big yarn about the nigger?”

They were but slightly to one side.  The prow of the steam-boat, which drew but little water, had already passed below them.  A small crowd on the vessel’s deck leaned over the paddle-box.  Standing up in the boat, Susannah searched the faces of the men looking down.  They all looked at her.

She singled out the captain by some sign in his dress, and pleaded urgent necessity for travelling with him.

“Look here,” said the boy, looking up at her from beneath, “I call that a low-down, mean sort of thing to do.  Why didn’t you tell me square?  I’d have brought you if you wanted do come.”

She pleaded with the boy too.  “It was better for you not to know my secrets.  If they ask you in the city you can say that you didn’t know.”

A dozen hands were held out to help her to climb the ladder on the shelving paddle-box.  “Keep off,” they cried to the boy, and he swung away from the churning wheel.

Susannah stood upon the deck pale and trembling.  The magnitude of the step came upon her, and she was beset by natural timidity and the painfulness of her dependence.  The men who stood around her with the right to question were not of a low class.  The captain, brawny and respectable, spoke for the group.  Behind him was a short but dignified gray-haired gentleman whom she took to be the present or former Governor of the State of Kentucky, of whom the boy had spoken.  With him were several men who appeared to have some fair title to gentility.  Other passengers pressed in an outer circle.

She would fain have explained herself more privately, but she could not endure to accept the privileges of the boat without explaining first that she was not able to pay for them.  “Gentlemen, I have no money.  I am entirely unprotected.  I have escaped in fear of my life from Nauvoo.”

She spoke instinctively, only desiring to set herself right, but when the words were said she knew that she had helped to heap opprobrium on the sect in whose cause so short a time ago she would have died.  The passengers were Missourians, as was the captain.  Among them went a whisper of chivalrous pity for her and of execration for the prophet and his followers.