Out from under that vast sounding board of a roof the noise at once diminished in volume, and I passed through the heart of the dust and babel and gained the cabin deck of the _Memphis_. A steward looked over my ticket and guided me to the berth I had reserved. It was then half past nine; still two hours and a half to the time of departure. I took a look around the upper deck. Quite a number of passengers were already aboard. Some were gone to bed; others were grouped in the aft saloon. One or two poker games had started, and little groups were looking on. But of them all I knew not a soul. Youth hungers for companionship, and I was no exception to my kind. It may be a truism to say that nowhere can one be so completely alone as in a crowd; but the singularity of it never came home to me until that night. But we are always learning the old things and esteeming them new. I roamed about the _Memphis_, wishing I had stayed up town till the last minute. It had been my plan to go down and turn in; the ceremony of casting off was not one that interested me greatly. But now the whim was gone; a spirit of unrest, an impatience to be off, drove sleep from my mind. If you have ever known the dreary monotony of waiting for train or steamer to start when your whole being craves the restfulness of motion you will not wonder that I made one more round of the deck and saloons and then left the _Memphis_ to roam aimlessly past the serried wharves that faced the stream. I don’t recollect just how far I wandered. If the place had been strange to me I should likely have been more circumspect in my prowling. As it was, my only concern was to be at the S.S. Company’s wharf by midnight, and midnight was yet afar. So I poked along, stopping now and then to hang over a railing and peer across the dark sweep of the Mississippi toward the Illinois shore. Between, the lights of divers craft twinkled like fireflies, and tootings of major and minor keys with varying volume of sound went wailing through the night. A big passenger packet, hailing from up-river, swept into view. Ablaze from her bow to the churning stern wheel she bore down like a floating villa strung with yellow gems. A band blared “Dixie” from somewhere amidships. I was young enough to have some degree of enthusiasm for such spectacles, and I turned onto a long half-lighted wharf and walked to its outermost tip to get a better view of the puffing river monster with its thousand gleaming eyes. Until she came abreast and passed, I stood there watching. In a careless way I became aware of two men strolling out on the wharf; in fact, I had passed them near the entrance gate. I remember that the swell from the big packet was beginning to slap against the wharf wall when one of them edged over and asked me the time.