Already, by twos and threes and singly, people were going aboard. Tad and his companion shouldered through the crowd that had assembled to witness the great event of the week, and crossed the gayly painted gangplank. Instead of climbing the broad stairway to the deck above, McCann led the boy forward through a narrow alleyway just inside the paddle-box amidships. A blast of heat struck them as they emerged, and Tad found himself facing a row of glowing doors, where sweating darkies fed the boiler-fires with cordwood. “That’s prime, seasoned hickory,” shouted the mate above the roar of the fires. “Don’t take long to get a head o’ steam with wood like this. But wait till ye see the dirty green stuff they give us down along the lower river.” They went through another passage where the heat was almost stifling and came out on the forward cargo deck, solidly piled with merchandise. Climbing a steep, ladder-like companionway, they reached the main passenger deck. Higher still, Tad could see the “Texas,” or upper deck, with the pilot-house perched atop, and just aft of it the two tall stacks, with clouds of smoke pouring from them. “Rest here awhile, me lad,” said McCann, “whiles I rustle that breakfast.” Tad sat down on his portmanteau, close to the rail, and watched the spectacle below. The passengers made a colorful assemblage. There were plain pioneer folk in linsey-woolsey and butternut cloth, going back to their homesteads in Indiana or Illinois. There were wealthy planters from the cotton States, resplendent in fine raiment and attended by retinues of colored body-servants. Small tradesmen, drovers and the like, from the nearer river towns, made up a fair proportion, and Tad saw two or three lonely-looking hunters in buckskin, with their long rifles and little packs of provisions, bound for the wild western country. One oddly dressed man, with an eyeglass, who was constantly asking questions and jotting down notes in a little book, Tad decided must be an English tourist. There remained a little group which he found it harder to identify. Three or four men in fashionable frock-coats, their pearl-gray beaver hats cocked at a rakish angle, and clouds of smoke rolling up from their cigars, idled and jested by the landward end of the gangplank. Either they had no luggage, or it was already stowed aboard. Tad did not care for their looks, and he liked them still less when he saw them joined by a companion--the tall, dark fellow whom he had already encountered twice in his brief stay at Wheeling. The friendly mate returned just then with a steaming pail of coffee and led Tad off to his bunk in the officers’ cabin. Breakfast over, McCann rose and put on his mate’s cap. “There goes the ‘all ashore’ call,” said he. “I’ll take ye down to the purser, an’ ye can get yer room from him.”