“They must be ignorant, or they’d know better,” he said to himself. “I notice, too, that none of the passengers look as though they had much money to spare; and from what they say I think they travel by boat only because it is cheap. They don’t seem to think it possible that a man should go in the boat if he has money enough to go by rail.” There were thirty or forty passengers on board at the start, Friday or no Friday; but Dick saw very little of them on the first night. He had an article to write; and he shut himself up in his stateroom. After breakfast next morning there was a commotion in the cabin. One of the colored stewards was talking loudly in front of the clerk’s office, and the clerk was trying to pacify him. Dick stepped up to see what it was about. “He’s been drinking, that’s all,” the clerk explained. “I suppose he has found a bottle of liquor in one of the staterooms he cleans, and has helped himself. You go on about your work now,” he added to the colored man, “and keep quiet.” But instead of keeping quiet he became more boisterous than ever and began to swear at the clerk. “Here, George! Henry! Thomas! Take this man away from here!” the clerk called to a number of waiters about the table. “Take him down on the lower deck till he cools off.” In a minute a half-dozen of them, all colored, surrounded the man. Suddenly the waiters all sprang back in alarm. The man had thrust his hand under his shirt bosom, and Dick expected to see him draw out a knife. But when the hand came out it had only a little round packet about the size of a very small egg, covered with brownish cloth, much handled, and dirty-looking. The negro waiters could hardly have shown as much alarm if the man had drawn a knife. They shrank back in fear; it seemed to Dick that they actually turned pale; the teeth of some of them chattered. “He got de rabbit foot!” one of them exclaimed. “He a Hoodoo, boss!” another cried: “’tain’t safe to tech him. I wouldn’t lay hands on him fer no money.” Dick was becoming very much interested. He had heard of the negroes carrying a rabbit’s foot for a charm, and of their Hoodoo nonsense, but he had never expected to have the good luck to see it so soon. “Stan’ back!” the half-drunken man shouted, waving the little package in the air. He had sense enough left to see that the other waiters were afraid of him and to take advantage of the fact. “Stan’ back! I’ll work de rabbit’s foot on any man w’at comes near me.” The clerk sent a boy in a hurry after the two mates, and in a minute they appeared--big, brawny, white men. They had no fear of the rabbit’s foot, and they seized the man and hustled him out of the cabin and down the companionway, Dick and many of the other passengers following.