The Last of the Flatboats: A Story of the Mississippi and Its Interesting Family of Rivers

Book excerpt: “Give it up, boys; you’re tired, and you’ve been in the water too long already. And, besides, I’ve decided that this job’s done.” It was Ed Lowry who spoke. He was lying on the sand under a big sycamore tree that had slid, roots and all, off the river bank above, and now stood leaning like a drunken man trying to stand upright. Ed was a tall, slender, and not at all robust boy, with a big head, and a tremendous shock of half-curly hair to make it look bigger. The four boys whom he addressed had been diving in the river and struggling with something under the water, but without success. Three of them accepted Ed’s suggestion, as all of them were accustomed to do, not because he had any particular right to make suggestions to them, but because he was so far the moral and intellectual superior of every boy in town, and was always so wise and kindly and just in his decisions, that they had come to regard his word as a sort of law without themselves quite knowing why. Three of the boys left the river, therefore, shook the water off their sunburned bodies,—for they had no towels,—and slipped into the loose shirt and cottonade trousers that constituted their sole costume. The other boy—Ed’s younger brother, Philip—was not so ready to accept suggestions. In response to Ed’s call, he cried out in a sort of mock heroics:— “Never say die! In the words of the immortal Lawrence, or some other immortal who died a long time ago, ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ I’m going to get that pig if it takes all summer.” The boys all laughed as they threw themselves down upon the sand by Ed. “Might as well let him alone,” said Will Moreraud; “he never will quit.” Meantime Phil had dived three or four times more, each time going down head first, wrestling with the object as long as he could hold his breath, and each time manifestly moving one end or the other of it nearer the shore, and into shallower water, before coming to the surface again. When he had caught his breath after the third or fourth struggle, he called out:— “I say, boys, it isn’t a pig at all, but a good average-sized elephant. ‘Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,’ I’m going to get that animal ashore.”