The Calamity on French Reef 138 CHAPTER XIII.   A Night Lost in the Storm 149 CHAPTER XIV.   Looking for the Islander 160 CHAPTER XV.   A Partial Solution of the Mystery 172 CHAPTER XVI.   Across the Gulf of Mexico 184 CHAPTER XVII.   The Sylvania in Ambush 196 CHAPTER XVIII.   How Nick Boomsby managed his Case 208 CHAPTER XIX.   A Search for the Lost Treasure 220 CHAPTER XX.   The Theory and the Facts 231 CHAPTER XXI.   Up the Mississippi 242 CHAPTER XXII.   The Islander in a Bad Fix 253 CHAPTER XXIII.   An Embarrassing Situation 265 CHAPTER XXIV.   A Crevasse on the Mississippi 277 CHAPTER XXV.   Sailing Across the Fields 289 CHAPTER XXVI.   A Desperate Struggle with the Rushing Waters 301 CHAPTER XXVII.   The Planter and his Family 312 CHAPTER XXVIII.   A Distinguished Passenger 324 CHAPTER XXIX.   Up the River for many Days 335 CHAPTER XXX.   Up another River and Home Again 347

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UP THE RIVER;

OR,

YACHTING ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

 

CHAPTER I.

IN CAPTAIN BOOMSBY'S SALOON.

"I don't think it's quite the thing, Alick," said my cousin, Owen Garningham, as we were walking through Bay Street after our return to Jacksonville from the interior of Florida.

"What is not quite the thing, Owen?" I inquired, for he had given me no clue to what he was thinking about.

"After I chartered your steamer for a year to come here, and go up the Mississippi River—by the way, this river is called 'The Father of Waters,' isn't it?" asked Owen, flying off from the subject in his mind, as he was in the habit of doing.

"Every schoolboy in this country learns that from his geography," I replied.

"Happily, I was never a schoolboy in this country, and I didn't find it out from the geography. If the Mississippi is the Father of Waters, can you tell me who is the mother of them?"

"The Miss'ouri."

"O, ah! Don't you feel faint, Captain Alick?" added Owen, stopping short on the sidewalk, and gazing into my face with a look of mock anxiety.

"Not at all; I think I could swallow a burly Briton or two, if the occasion required."

"Don't do it! It would ruin your digestion. But it strikes me those two rivers are but one."

"I think so, too, and they ought to be. Father and mother—man and wife—ought to be one," I answered, as indifferently as I could. "But something was not quite the thing; and if there is anything in this country that is not quite the thing, I want to know what it is."

"When I chartered the Sylvania to come down here, and then go up the 'Father of Waters,' it isn't quite the thing for your father to declare the whole thing off at this point of the cruise," replied Owen. "I was going to have a jolly good time going up the river."

"You may have it yet, for I have given you a cordial invitation to go 'up the river' with me; and I mean every word I said about the matter," I added, in soothing tones.

"But your father says the charter arrangement is ended, and you may go where you like in your steamer."

"And I concluded at once to carry out all the arrangements for this trip, just as we made them at Detroit," I replied. "I have invited the Shepards and the Tiffanys to join us, and everything will go on just as it