As early as the evening before, a good hundred and fifty miles back down the river, the _Antelope_, it will be remembered, had been close on the _Westwood's_ heels. So Gilmore reminded his wife. So Hugh needlessly reminded Ramsey. From the mate it was further learned that the pursuer had overhauled the pursued between Petit Goufre--which he and the whole company called Petty Gulf--and Grand Gulf; places named before the days of steam for their dangerous eddies. Yet, he went on to tell Ramsey, the swifter boat, with more freight to put ashore and with a larger appetite for cord-wood, had never got clean away. Even now, in full view ahead, she was down at half speed, wooding up from a barge in tow alongside. You could hear her crew singing as they trotted under their great shoulder loads of wood. The amateurs, except Hugh but including Ramsey, caught up their song and were promptly joined by a group around the bell of the _Westwood_ as that gallant loser foamed along between the _Votaress_ and the shore: "Oh, if I had a scolding wife, As sure as you are born I'd take her down to Noo Orleans And trade her off for corn." Presently the _Antelope_ cast off the emptied flat in midstream, and a redoubled whiteness behind her paddle-boxes showed full speed. "Now we can give her a square deal!" said a youth. "And pass her inside of an hour!" declared another. "In Bunch's Cut-off!" ventured one to the commodore, but the commodore said the _Votaress_ herself was hungry for wood, and the mate confirmed him by a nod. "How much wood," some one asked the mate, "will a boat like this use up in twenty-four hours?" It quickened the blood to be up here midway between these turbid waters and yonder passionate sky so joyous in one quarter, so angry in another; particularly to be here while steadily distancing one beautiful boat and overtaking another "amid green islands," as Mrs. Gilmore quoted--one of which, still in sight astern, was that old haunt of flatboat robbers, called Island Ninety-four, Stack's Island, or Crow's Nest. One half forgot the sad state of affairs below. Conversation glided as swiftly as a flock of swallows and in as many directions. "How much wood?" said the mate. "Well, that sort o' depends. I once part owned a boat that fo' one whole month didn't burn enough wood to dry the sheriff's shoes, but that 'uz 'cause he kep' her tied up to the bank." Ramsey did not hear this and cared nothing for the laugh it won. She had seen the doctor and the priest slip from the twins' room in the texas and go below aft. "How's mom-a?" she eagerly asked the commodore. "Very well." "How's Lucian?" Lucian was so much better, he told her, that both brothers had been returned to their cabin stateroom. "Then you've just put a new case into the texas!" The commodore smiled. "Yes, from the freight deck." "Freight--humph! That's the lower deck," she reminiscently said, turning to Hugh. "Who is it? Is it--Otto?"