pfirst">The Music of His Voice

BOOK I

THE SCHOOLMASTER

THE LEAD OF HONOUR

CHAPTER I

YOUTH AND AMBITION

Beyond the gleam of the torch basket at the masthead, the bosom of the great Father of Waters widened into a sea, infinite in its solitude, desolately vast in the impending gloom of the purple night. An orange coloured moon hovered on the dark strip of the horizon; the hot breeze of a Southern August was stirring fitfully.

He was standing alone on the upper deck of the boat, looking straight before him with that intensity of gaze and purpose in his deep hazel eyes that our grandfathers tell us about—a wonderful expression in which the energy of his thoughts seemed to throw out a flamelike glow holding the observer spellbound and charmed into forgetfulness. He was young then, little over twenty, and his thin, slight figure, erect and full of simple dignity, was clothed in plain garments of black, relieved at the wrist bands with fine white linen and at the collar by a high stock whose pointed ends extended up beyond his chin. His face, delicately moulded and oval to perfection, had written upon it, in the freshness of its youth, all the hopes and desires and ambitions that remained with him to the end—for it seems that he never lost his youthful appreciation of life, nor knew what it meant to sink under disappointments. In his hand he carried a small cane which he used to aid him in walking and in standing firmly; for one leg was shrunken into a slight deformity.

On the intense, lonely stillness of the night the throbbing puffs of the engines seemed the voice of the great river—relentless, solemn, insistent. The tinkling of the pilot's bell sounded intermittently from the engine-room; and monotonously reiterated, came the weird call of the leadsman as he sounded the depths of the uncertain channel.

"M-a-r-k eight! M-a-r-k eight! Quarter less eight!"

Sargent Everett turned away from the deepening gloom of the river, restless and impatient, now that his destination was so near. Three days, if all went well, would see him in the town he had chosen for the commencement of his career.

The leadsman's call broke more harshly on the night. "Mark four! Mark four! Quarter—less—"

Suddenly the pulsing of the engines stopped and the boat drifted into the enveloping shadows of the shore. The branches of a tree swept the upper deck, leaving sprays of moss tangled in the railing. A bell crashed out a signal of alarm and the boat came to a full stop.

"Tie up and get out there and sound that channel, Jiggetts," came a sonorous voice from the lower deck. "I'm not a-countin' on goin' a-ground here to-night. God knows what this old river's been up to since we passed up, two months ago."

Directly following the words, a huge line of rope went coiling through the air to the shore. Two negroes sprang after it, hastily wrapping it around a mammoth cottonwood tree that towered out of the darkness. A skiff shot out from the boat; two men at the oars, and one standing well forward recording the depth as they moved carefully along.

In a few minutes the boat became enveloped once more in the stillness of the night; the flare from the torch baskets at the masthead gleamed upon a shore of endless willows, a distant line of cypresses, a land where seemingly no explorer had yet penetrated. The call of the leadsman grew fainter and fainter, dying away at last to an echo.

"Mighty sorry to tie up." The Captain's voice broke the stillness as he approached the young traveller, "but I reckon it's better than runnin' on one of them bars and restin' there till another boat comes along and pulls us off. I reckon you'd rather run the chance, hey, just so's you could get to the end of your travellin'. I know how you feel. You're just itching to get there this minute and get to work—ain't it the truth?"

The Captain, a rugged pioneer, known from one end of the river to the other, shoved his hands deep into his pockets and peered into the darkness.

"Yes, I want to get there, Captain. I'm impatient and restless and all that,—and yet," he hesitated, following the glance of the man beside him. "I believe I've fallen under the spell of this old river. At first it made me think of the ocean in its breadth and loneliness, but I see now that it is not the same at all. This wilderness of lowlands that we have been passing through for the last week makes it seem even more desolate and forsaken. Yet—in its very solitude one feels a certain nearness to God," he ended reflectively.

The old Captain's eyes shifted from the black shore, deepening, as his gaze lingered on the broad expanse of water, into an expression much like that of a dog that gazes into the eyes of the master it worships.

"We-ell, I reckon I'm sorter fond of it, too. When a feller's lived with a thing fifty years he's mighty likely to have some sorter feelin' for it." His eyes twinkled as he continued, "Y' know, sir, that old river always puts me in mind of a woman; it's changing its mind all the time, it's cantankerous—you can't any more count on it than a bad penny, and when it takes a notion to change its channel, it just goes ahead and does it and don't say a thing. Why, sir, haven't I see it cut off ten miles in one place by goin' straight through when it used to make a bend! I like it, though, just because it's notionate and don't bother about anybody. D' you ever hear the old sayin' that when the good Lord made it, He washed His hands in it and told it to go where it damn pleased? Well, sir," the old fellow threw back his head and let out a gust of laughter, "it's been doin' that pretty nigh ever since!"

He turned around as he ended so that he looked into the young man's face, and in the moments of silence that followed, the mass of wrinkles about his eyes moved into an expression of half mirth, half sadness. He had liked the youngster, as he called him, since the moment he had come aboard at St. Louis and taken passage for the South. Something in Sargent Everett's peculiarly winning manner, in his fresh good humour and manliness, or perhaps a sympathy for his deformity, had awakened an interest in the old boatman. What it was he did not stop to consider, but he liked the boy, and now that his long journey was nearing its end, he felt a pang of regret that was new to him. Looking into the bright, hopeful face before him, he thought that, after all, youth was the only period of life worth living.

"An' so you're another one of them fellers who're comin' down here to make their fortunes," he finally said, as if more in comment than in question.

The young fellow's face brightened responsively.