Driftwood (Spears)/Chapter 4

OWN the Mississippi, amid the thousands of tons of jagged, menacing drift, floated a baby-carriage. Its wheels were under-water; its body was half-submerged; its handles stood up in a graceful curve behind.

Strapped into the seat of the carriage was a blue-eyed, fair-haired baby, in a short dress and thick worsted jacket and cap, bright red in color. Over the little buggy swung a parasol top.

All night long the strange little ark had floated down the river, the baby sleeping, with a milk-bottle in its hands. Perhaps the baby had waked up and cried, or perhaps its instinct had been to keep still in the black gloom. After daybreak, when the sun came out, the child sat up and looked around from under its canopy. A hundred yards away was the shanty-boat, with the big motor-launch lashed alongside.

"Da-da!" the baby cried, waving its hands.

The three boys burst out upon the stern deck and stared at their fellow-voyager! Never in all their born days had they seen such a thing. They were sweeping down the long bend that touched the river bluffs toward the east, where there was a town they could have reached. For hours they had been coming down between rows of submerged trees, with occasional glimpses of a levee toward the westward, working through the drift, making ready to dash ashore at some good point, but they were more than willing to miss their first real chance in order to get the baby. They couldn’t think of leaving it to be rescued by some one else—or perhaps not to be rescued at all—and so, with one regretful glance at the shore and the people on the banks, they started back into the drift.

"Dog-gone it!" Jep exclaimed. "A fellow can’t let that kid go on down! Somethin’ might happen to it!" Thus they abandoned their good landing and edged their way among the floating chunks, at last arriving within arms’ length of the drift baby, who laughed and "gooed" at them as Sib and Jimmy caught the handles and the body of the strange little ark, to lift it out.

On the deck they solved the mystery of the buoyancy of the cart; the baby was sitting on a thin cotton mattress on top of one filled with air.

"Now we’ve got him, what’ll we do with him?" Sib grinned.

"I ain’t never tended him," Jimmy remarked, squinting one eye, "but if he’s the same’s most babies, I can look after him, and so can Jep. We’ve had experience, right in our family, Jep and me has. He’s hungry, but glad to have company. That bottle’s plumb dry! That’s more’n he is, comin’ down Old Mississip a hundred miles! Wish we had some dif’rent clothes for him."

"My mother has some old clothes for babies, in one of her trunks!" Sib recollected: "some old bloomers and one thing and another, she’s been saving. Somehow, she hated to throw them away. They’ll be some use, now, maybe!"

"You take a woman, and they always save them things up," Jimmy said. "I bet my mother’s got a whole clothes-basket full o’ such things, baby stockin’s and that sort o’ junk. Say, Jep, mix up some o’ that condensed milk in warm water, and so on—you know how!—and me’n Sib here’ll sort o’ look after this kid. You hold him, Sib! Then I’ll—"

Very practical river boys, they proceeded to give first aid to the youngster who had come floating down the river all night, and wasn’t crying in the morning! How the baby had gone afloat they could but imagine; it might have been that a house had fallen apart and a balcony had floated from under the carriage; or the carriage might have run down some village street into the river, or a ferry-boat might have been crushed, or some little bridge on a tributary stream carried away. The boys could think of lots of things that might have happened!

Sibley brought out what seemed in their judgment enough clothes to keep the baby warm after its bath, but they didn’t put on dresses. Instead, they put on bloomers, and when it had fed a while, lying on its back on the cot, the baby sat up and laughed. It rolled over and landed on the floor, with a bump that made the three boys start.

"Ain’t hurt a bit!" Jep said. "Take one o’ these kids, and their bones bend around, soft and rubbery. If one of us fell around that away, we’d bust an arm!"

Sib could see no place to land, out there in the bottoms. Trees were up to their branches in water, and on both sides of the flood were great wildernesses. He was captain; on him the responsibility fell. It would do no good to land in such wild places; he must watch for a chance to get in among people. He could not tell where he was, but they were going down at the rate of about seven miles an hour; in fifteen hours they had come, probably, a hundred miles, at least.

"We’re below the Ohio," he reflected. "Hope the folks aren’t worrying!"

Clouds were scattering in the sky, and there were patches of sunshine, which made the day a pleasant, balmy one. Birds were singing in the woods, despite the overflow; but everywhere was the desolation of danger, damage, and the flat, menacing drift. Six or eight houses and barns were in sight, floating down; on one of which several chicks were huddled along the ridge-pole. Half a mile away an animal of some kind was running up and down on what had been the side of a house—perhaps a dog, or a wild coon. Flocks of ducks were flying overhead, or stretching their wings in slack water.

Sibley went over the side into the motor-boat, and rolled the canvas back to clear the engine. He looked it over, and then turned on the spark, threw on the gas, and stepped on the starter. Instantly the motor responded. It started like a skiff motor, with which Sibley was familiar.

He warmed the motor up for a minute, and then threw over the reverse, to engage the propeller. The big launch began to press ahead, and Sibley steered, working slowly to the westward, where the edge of the drift was at a safe distance away.

"I got some breakfast for us!" Jimmy announced, and Sib stopped the machine and went aboard the shanty-boat.

"I don’t know where we’d better land in," Sib said. "Everything is underwater, down here. New Madrid is somewhere below; probably that will be as good as any place. We’d only be in the way in the overflow, on the levee."

"New Madrid would be as good as any place!" Jimmy admitted. "Glad my mother ain’t home! I bet she’d fret and stew, if she knew we two was floatin’ off down-stream, and Paw didn’t know where we was!"

"We’ll telegraph soon’s we find a place," Sibley promised. "I bet that kid’s mother is wondering where he is, too. Nice-looking baby."

"Yes, ’bout two years old, too, ain’t he, Jep?"

"Just about!" Jep agreed. "Kind o’ oldish to be eatin’ out of a bottle, though. Might try him with somethin’ with some heft to it."

"Yes, and then he’ll git the stomach-ache! I don’t want any stomach-achin’ kids this trip!" Jimmy declared, with decision.

"I’ve got some eggs, and we’ll soft-boil them," Sibley remarked. "But he’s sleepy, now; sleep’s good for babies!"

After breakfast, when Driftwood, as they called the baby, was asleep, the three took note of their condition. They had edged over to the west side of the current, and they were approaching a great bend in the stream, the drift all throwing against the left-hand side, and running in a narrow ribbon—a ribbon a half mile wide, instead of nearly a mile, as before.

A few turns of the launch’s wheel took them out of the drift into open water. The current, which had been going straight south, took a turn and headed almost due north.

"Why, I believe that’s Slough Neck!" Jimmy declared. "Look’t that! There’s a levee over there. That’s the only east-side levee along here. That was Hickman we passed up there, and where we got the kid was Columbus. Now I know where we are. Last time I was down through here, the old creek was three feet, and the steamer Kate was aground on a sand bar, and you couldn’t hardly get down some crossin’s in a shanty-boat. Now look at it!"

"That’s what it is!" Sib agreed. "Why, we’re about thirty feet over Island Number Ten sand-bar. Used to be a fort here in the Civil War. And this is Watson’s Point, and that’s where Winchester Chute goes through! It was right along here that that big feud was, back in the old days, that Mark Twain tells about in ‘Huckleberry Finn’!"

"I know that book!" Jimmy said. "It’s real natural—just the way it happened. But I don’t care much for history."

"There’s New Madrid!" Jep pointed. "See the sawmill? Whew! but the water’s gettin’ up, along here! Away back yonder there used to be ten or fifteen feet o’ land above high-water mark; but the mud an’ gravel an’ sand out o’ the Missouri’s fillin’ the river-bed all up—"

"Bringing down four hundred million cubic yards of silt past the mouth of the Ohio every year," Sib said. "I’ve a book in there that tells all about it. It’s the ‘Survey of the Mississippi’—"

"They’ll have to survey it all over again, after this flood," Jimmy observed. "If it hadn’t been for the government revetment works over on Slough Neck, the river’d cut through there five years ago. It’s only a mile across there, now, and she’s cavin’ on the lower side." .

"It shows on the inch-to-the-mile maps," Sib said. "The eighteen-ninety survey and the nineteen-hundred-and-six survey in red show a lot of difference. We’d better start that motor; there’s a four-mile eddy along here, almost slack water, and we’ll never get down to the city landing if we don’t drive some."

Slowly, because they wanted to pick their landing on the New Madrid waterfront, they worked down the edge of the main current along the outer side of the dead water. As they moved down, a skiff left the bank and came to meet them, a man pulling the oars stoutly.

"Howdy!" he hailed. "Where’s your daddy?"

"Up to Cape Girardeau," Sibley replied.

"Tripping down alone? Say! you’ve a good motor-boat there! Will you go back on rescue work?—back in the swamps?"

He pointed with a sweep of his arm into the back country of southeastern Missouri.

"Why—" Sibley began.

"You’re needed, boys! Every boat’s needed! Every one who can drive a boat is out—and you’re river boys and know the water!"

"Well—sure!" Sibley exclaimed. "You’ll go, Jimmy? We’ll take the motor-boat."

"Yes, sir!"

"I’ll have to watch the kid and shanty-boat," Jep said.

"Good boys!" the man exclaimed, with a catch of his breath.

"Where’ll we go in?" Sib asked, looking along the bank that was above water.

"You can make it around the head of the levee, down in the bend, there. Portage Bayou heads there, and you go down that, or go west over the bottoms. You can’t fail to find work to do, but specially down along Little River’s a lot of trouble. The river’s on the rise, and another foot, on top of what’s coming through those low levees above Cairo. Go to it!"

"After I’ve sent a message," Sib said. "I’ll tow the shanty-boat in to a landing, and we’ll start in the launch in ten minutes—down Portage Bayou?"

"You can’t miss it through the brake. ’Course, out in the fields you’ll have to feel along. There’ll likely be boats down there, telling you which way to work. Anyhow, anybody on a roof, take ’em in!"

They ran the boats out of the river into Sawmill Bayou, where other shanty-boats had moored. They landed against the bank, and made fast to a stump and a fence post that were just being surrounded by the rising tide. As they cast off the motor-boat lines, a man in hip boots, a broad-brimmed hat, and black frock coat came down to them.

"Going out, boys?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good! Take some grub with you—"

"That’s so!" Sib gasped.

"You can’t go wrong, back there. If they’re reasonably safe, go after those that won’t last!"

Sibley’s message to his parents read:



"I won’t tell them I’m going into the overflow," Sib mused. "Mother’d worry worse than ever!"

"I’ll deliver it to the telegraph office," the man said. "The wires are down, though, and they can’t send it, yet. You’re Sibley Carruth, eh? We had word to watch out for you. Good-by!" Sib and Jimmy backed out into the bayou and, turning around, headed down the New Madrid waterfront, which was only a few inches above the level of the flood. They could look the length of the main street as they ran down, with the bank on one side and the black drift a few yards distant on the other.

Below town the high ground dipped down under the water surface, and they saw the end of the levee, around the head of which the water was sloping and rocking in a current out into the vast stillness of the overflow.

"There’s not much water across," Sib said. "We must be drawing—how much?"

"Eighteen inches. There’s two feet o’ water across there. See the way it flows?" Jimmy pointed.

Then, in silence, with the motor almost stopped, they shot down the current from the river around the levee-head, into the water that had come down the bottoms from the broken levees above the Ohio.

Houses half submerged stood in the midst of great lakes, but rowboats fast to the balcony posts showed that the people there had means of escape. It was when they skirted around flooded woods, followed a road cut through the timber, and entered the clearings in the wilderness miles from the town that they found their work to do.

"Oh-h! Mister! Mister!" a voice shrieked. "This-yeah house is twistin’, an’ we ain’t no boat!"