"They are happy, those men?" said Charlotte, turning suddenly upon the silent old riverman at her side. "The nigger 'rousties,' you mean?--oh, yes. I guess so." "But it is such a hard life," she protested. "I don't see how they can sing." The captain smiled good-naturedly. "It is a pretty hard life," he admitted. "But they're in a class by themselves. You couldn't hire a river nigger to do anything else. Then, again, a man doesn't miss what he's never had. They get a plenty to eat, and the soft side of a cargo pile makes a pretty good bed, if you've never slept in a better one." Miss Farnham shook her head thoughtfully. "Isn't that putting them terribly low in the scale of humanity? Surely there must be some among them who are capable of better things." She was trying desperately hard to lead up to the stubble-bearded man, and it was the most difficult task she had ever set herself. "Not among the black boys, I'm afraid. Now and then a white man drifts into a crew, but that's a different matter." "Better or worse?" she queried. "Worse, usually. It's a pretty poor stick of a white man that can't find something better than 'rousting' on a steamboat." Here was her chance, and she took it courageously. "Haven't you one man in the _Belle Julie's_ crew who has earned a better recommendation than that, Captain Mayfield?" "You mean that sick hobo who went into the river after M'Grath last night? I didn't know that story had got back to the ladies' cabin." "It hasn't. But I know it because I was looking on. I couldn't sleep, and I had gone out to see them make a night landing. Why do you call him 'the sick hobo'?" The captain was paying strict attention now, looking at her curiously from beneath the grizzled eyebrows. But he saw only the classic profile. "That's what he is--or at least, what he let on to be when he shipped with us," he replied. Then: "You say you saw it: tell me what happened." "I am not sure that I quite understood the beginning of it," she said doubtfully. "Two men, the white man and a negro, went ashore to untie the boat. They both jumped from the stage while it was going up, and it was the white man who untied the rope alone. After the boat began to swing away from the bank, he saw that the other man was hurt and went to help him. Mr. M'Grath was angry and he shouted at them to come aboard. With the boat going away from the shore, they couldn't; so the white man ran and tied the rope again. Am I getting it awfully mixed up?" "Not at all," said the captain. "What happened then?"