Meanwhile the boat, with her bell ringing, was slowly clanking and snorting on through the foaming and brattling flood around her bows and wheels, and the passengers were pouring forth, men, women and children, on her decks. The fugitive stood silently by his captor, on the lower forward deck, amidst the tumult and crowding of the risen multitude, biding his time. The moment the boat touched the levee he was determined to quietly slip aside from his companion and lose himself in the crowd. To this end he stood a little to one side of him, watching his every movement. Suddenly the clatter of conversation and the trampling of feet were stricken still by a wild yell, above which was heard the slow, impassive snort and clank of the engine, and the brattling wash of the water. Then burst forth a shrill clamor of cries and screams from the after deck, followed by a trampling rush which threw all forward, as by a galvanic shock, into mad confusion; then behind the pouring crowd, suddenly lightened a red flare, followed by a tremendous volume of black smoke, and at once, amidst terrific disorder, uprose a dreadful storm of yells and screams from the horror-stricken multitude. The next instant the uproar of voices was stifled in a multitudinous choking and gasping, as the thick, poisonous smoke swept over the decks, and presently up shot a sheeting burst of clear flame, with shrivelling ringlets of black vapor writhing and vanishing away in it, lighting the ghastly pallor of the hundreds of terrified faces, all turned one way, and throwing its lurid glare on the churning froth and the lifting swells, and on the myriad masts and spars and rigging of the surrounding vessels, which started out suddenly in lines and bars of tawny splendor against a background of gloom.