Up in the pilot-house he was now, with the captain and the pilot and the great shadowy wheel. The ladies had all vanished, leaving the cabin below deserted and a trifle forlorn. Once he had taken his way through those sacred precincts, affecting to be searching for some one; and so he was,--to discover if any one there was worth looking at twice: and this he esteemed a justifiable if not a laudable enterprise, for were the ladies not welcome to look at him? His trim business suit he felt was quite the correct thing. He had entire confidence in his tailor, and he swore by his barber! His proper thankfulness to his Creator, too, was not impaired by any morbid self-depreciation. With his strong, alert, handsome figure, his dark red-brown hair, his eyes of the same tint, only kindled into fire, his long dark lashes, his drooping mustache, and the features with which nature had taken some very particular pains,--the ladies were quite welcome not to turn their heads away, if they chose. However, his vanity was not insatiable. He had made his triumphal progress through the circle earlier in the evening, and now he was relishing the captain’s surprised laughter at sundry feats that he was exhibiting with a silver dollar and a goblet which did not always hold water. One moment the silver dollar was under it, glimmering affably through the thin glass; then, with no human approach to it, the goblet was empty. It seemed the problem of life to the jolly captain to discover how this was done, and being an ambitious wight, he assured his passenger, with a wild wager of ten dollars to nothing, that, after the boat should leave the bank again, he would be able to do the trick himself before they could make another landing. Before they made another landing he was initiated into deeper mysteries. The boat was heading slowly for the shore. For the whistle, in loud husky amplitudes of sound, overpowering when heard so close at hand, had broken abruptly on the air, and the echoes of all the wild moss-draped cypress woods on either hand were answering the accustomed sound through the dark aisles of the swamp. To many a far cabin up lonely bayous they carried the note of the progress of “de big boat up de ribber.” The great tremulous craft was swinging majestically round in midstream. Now and again sounded the sharp jangling of the pilot’s bell. Then the boat paused with a quivering shock, backed, veered to one side, approached the shore, paused again, and then smoothly glided forward, trembled anew, and was still.