"The _Fly-up-the-Creek_!" gasped Ramsey. "Oh, that _can't_ be all!" She sprang up a stair, dragging the old woman after, and on the hurricane-deck, near a paddle-box, stood for a moment in the wide glory of water, land, and early sky, agape again at the squalid object. Then, as the full humor of the thing struck her--but her behavior may as well go undescribed. Yet it could not have been so very bad, for the pilot high above at the wheel, Watson's "partner," glancing down from his side window, enjoyed it much; silently, it is true, unsmilingly; yet so heartily that he took a fresh bite of tobacco, chewed with energy, and thought of home. When the fit was over, old Joy had been pressed into a chair and the theme was once more Phyllis. "Why did they bring her to New Orleans?" was the question. "Who, Phyllis? She wuz fotch down fo' to be sold." Ramsey's gaze was roaming every sky-line, but at that word it flashed back: "How, sold? Pop-a's told me, himself, he never in his life sold one of his negroes!" "Is I said he did? Is I call' heh his niggeh? Ain't I done say she wuz a quadroom?" "Why," laughed Ramsey, "a quadroon's a negro!" "Not in de sight o' Gawd! My Lawd, dat's de shame on it!--dat de likes o' my baby kin say de likes o' dat! Oh, you kin _make_ a niggeh out'n a simon-pyo' white gal ef you dess raise heh wid de niggehs and treat heh like a niggeh; but----" Ramsey flushed: "Oh, I don't believe that!" "Look hyuh, chile! I ain't choosin' to tell about dat, but--I's seen it done! Time an' ag'in! An' Phyllis she see it done! Dat's how come Phyllis to be de kind o' Phyllis she come to be!" "What kind? Good, or bad? I don't want to hear about her if she was good." "She was bofe. But I ain't hawngry to tell about heh, naw 'bout de _Quak'ess_." The narrator shut her lips tight. The morning air was like a sparkling wine. Ramsey squared her slim shoulders and drank it. The turbid waters next the sunrise showed a marvellous lilac hue, their myriad ripples tipped with pink, silver, and gold. Up-stream the river opened widely to the west, but the _Votaress_ bore northward across the foot of the reach, and soon it was plain that she was about to enter a "chute," whose vividly green, low, wooded shore on her larboard bow was a large island: an island of swamp and jungle, ancient fastness of an Indian prophet, hiddenly swarming with all the ravening and venomous brute, reptile, and insect life possible to the region. Prophet's Island, it was, yet no senator, bishop, general, judge, or squire was in sight.