“How’s she loaded?”

“Two inches by the head, sir.”

“’T ain’t enough!”

The captain shouted, now: 

“Call the mate.  Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar forrard—­put her ten inches by the head.  Lively, now!”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting “down by the head.”

The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences, low and earnestly.  As their excitement rose, their voices went down.  As fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up—­but always with a studied air of calmness.  Each time the verdict was: 

“She’s a gaining!”

The captain spoke through the tube: 

“What steam are You carrying?”

“A hundred and forty-two, sir!  But she’s getting hotter and hotter all the time.”

The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain.  Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the perspiration flowing down heir faces.  They were holding the boat so close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to stern.

“Stand by!” whispered George.

“All ready!” said Jim, under his breath.

“Let her come!”

The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long diagonal toward the other shore.  She closed in again and thrashed her fierce way along the willows as before.  The captain put down the glass: 

“Lord how she walks up on us!  I do hate to be beat!”

“Jim,” said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, “how’ll it do to try Murderer’s Chute?”

“Well, it’s—­it’s taking chances.  How was the cottonwood stump on the false point below Boardman’s Island this morning?”

“Water just touching the roots.”

“Well it’s pretty close work.  That gives six feet scant in the head of Murderer’s Chute.  We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly right.  But it’s worth trying.  She don’t dare tackle it!”—­meaning the Amaranth.

In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek, and the Amaranth’s approaching lights were shut out in a moment.  Not a whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness while the steamer tore along.  The chute seemed to come to an end every fifty yards, but always opened out in time.  Now the head of it was at hand.  George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck: