The passengers saw an immense huddle of drifted logs, and the broken timbers of shattered boats, and entire scows, rotting, half-submerged, or warping high and dry on top of the hill of confused ruin. The sight of these hulks, abandoned to the grinding eddies, added a sense of dread to the weary anxiety already felt by the girls. The progress down the Ohio had been tedious; how much more so the interminable windings on the Mississippi, and the long, lonesome nights, made sleepless by the cries of birds that flit in darkness, and by the howls of wild beasts. Evaleen's nocturnal fears, when the barge lay moored, were not so well founded as were the apprehensions which daylight renewed, of disaster on the treacherous flood. The more she learned of the river, the more she realized the risks of each day's navigation. "Young ladies, see! That is a sawyer; an ugly one, sticking its sharp horn up to hook us. I don't mind a danger which shows above water; but your sleeping sawyer is the mischief to be dreaded." "What's a sleeping sawyer?" "If I could point out the nasty thing, I wouldn't dread it; a sleeping sawyer does its sawing under the surface. We are liable to run on to the point of one any second." "Mercy! Do you think we are coming on a sleeping sawyer now?" asked Evaleen. The captain hoped not, and directed attention to another phenomenon not of a nature to induce feelings of security. "What do you see away down the river?" "Do you mean that low island?" "Yes, an island and not an island. Wait until we drift nearer. You will see river moss and rank water plants growing over the surface, but it is not part of the firm land; it is a wooden island." "How? A wooden island?" "Just so. We shall see many such. Logs and all kinds of drift lodge against the upper part of a stable island or peninsula, and the accumulated mass grows into a great raft matted together by roots and vines. The whole thing, driven by winds or currents, sometimes swings free from its anchorage and drifts away. Then it is called a floating, or wandering island." Lucrece, who had been sweeping the circle of the horizon with the seaman's glass, caught far to the northward, the glimpse of a sail. "I see away up the river what looks like a leetle black house, with a white thing on the roof." "That boat," said Winslow, "is miles and miles behind us; it is above the second bend. Let me look.--She carries a square sail, amidships, as we do, but she is not a barge. Stop, I know what she is--there's a flag at the top of the mast--she must be a government transport, coming with troops for Fort Adams or the Natchitoches country." Lucrece caught a quick breath and asked eagerly: "Troops from St. Louis, think you?" "Most likely, miss." Evaleen's interest was also excited, but she kept silent, and soon slipped away alone into her cabin. The French maiden remained on deck a long time, watching the transport, whenever she could bring it within the field of vision.