An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and Washington ascended to the hurricane deck to revel again in their new realm of enchantment.  They ran races up and down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends with the passenger-dogs chained under the lifeboat; tried to make friends with a passenger-bear fastened to the verge-staff but were not encouraged; “skinned the cat” on the hog-chains; in a word, exhausted the amusement-possibilities of the deck.  Then they looked wistfully up at the pilot house, and finally, little by little, Clay ventured up there, followed diffidently by Washington.  The pilot turned presently to “get his stern-marks,” saw the lads and invited them in.  Now their happiness was complete.  This cosy little house, built entirely of glass and commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician’s throne to them and their enjoyment of the place was simply boundless.

They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles ahead and saw the wooded capes fold back and reveal the bends beyond; and they looked miles to the rear and saw the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees and close itself together in the distance.  Presently the pilot said: 

“By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!”

A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down the river.  The pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily for a moment, and said, chiefly to himself: 

“It can’t be the Blue Wing.  She couldn’t pick us up this way.  It’s the Amaranth, sure!”

He bent over a speaking tube and said: 

“Who’s on watch down there?”

A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer: 

“I am.  Second engineer.”

“Good!  You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry—­the Amaranth’s just turned the point—­and she’s just a—­humping herself, too!”

The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded.  A voice out on the deck shouted: 

“Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!”

“No, I don’t want the lead,” said the pilot, “I want you.  Roust out the old man—­tell him the Amaranth’s coming.  And go and call Jim—­tell him.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

The “old man” was the captain—­he is always called so, on steamboats and ships; “Jim” was the other pilot.  Within two minutes both of these men were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump.  Jim was in his shirt sleeves,—­with his coat and vest on his arm.  He said: 

“I was just turning in.  Where’s the glass”

He took it and looked: 

“Don’t appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff—­it’s the Amaranth, dead sure!”

The captain took a good long look, and only said: 

“Damnation!”

George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck: