Gideon's Band: A Tale of the MississippiCable, George Washington
General
Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi
Cable, George Washington
Mississippi River -- Fiction
Aboard the _Votaress_, as in Tennessee Chute she faced again the morning
sun, two scenes were enacted at the same time. One took place below, on
the fore-castle; the other above and just aft of it, on the boiler deck.
In the lower there was but a single pine box, in the upper there were
two. In the lower stood the black-gowned priest, the two white-bonneted,
gray-robed sisters, Otto Marburg alone, and here a mass of immigrants
and there a majority of the crew. The upper scene included all the cabin
passengers--ladies seated--and half the boat's family. In fulfilment of
Basile's wish Hugh read: "I am the resurrection and the life." By Hugh's
invitation, given beforehand, the senator delivered a eulogy on the
bishop and added such tender praises of the boy, whom every one had
liked so early and so well, and gilded them with such delicate allusions
to the heroism of his mother, that few eyes were dry. The very twins
wept, though there was a touch of rage in their tears. By choice of the
parson's wife and sweetly led by her, they sang: "I would not live
alway." With streaming eyes Ramsey remembered how yearningly the poor
lad had clung to this dear earth, and she could only sit silent and
modestly wonder how anybody, under any fate that left them power to sing
at all, could sit there--stand there--on that boat, that river, in the
splendor of that sun, the beauty of that landscape, and call life a "few
lurid mornings."
A third scene occurred as the boat, facing westward, reached the head of
President's Island, fairest island in all the river, and coming into
full view of Memphis, a short league beyond, tolled her solemn bell and
landed at Pickering. Others on the lower deck besides Madame Marburg had
passed away in the night but had either been laid under the wet sands of
the water's edge in some wild grove down-stream or were not quite in
time, so to speak, for this landing. Contemplated from each deck by a
numerous gathering and from the pilot-house by Watson, Mrs. Gilmore, and
"Harriet," a small procession followed the priest and the three
boxes--borne by white-jackets--ashore and out of sight where a small
wooden church spire, inland behind the bluff, peered over its crest.
Madame Hayle leaned on Julian's arm, Ramsey on Lucian's, Hugh walked
with Marburg, the senator with the general, the first clerk with Ned,
the Californian with the cub pilot. By and by they returned, outwardly
unburdened, and the moment the last tread, the Californian's, was on the
stage, Watson's bells jingled and the _Votaress_ swung out and moved up
to the Memphis wharf-boat. But there Hugh, the first clerk, the steward,
and the doctor went up into town, and it was a long hour before they
reappeared and the black smoke billowed again from her chimneys and she
backed out and started up and away around "Paddy's Hen and Chickens."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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