Page:The Black Cat v01no01 (1895-10).pdf/8



HE ferry-boat, "Rappahannock," had an experience in the winter of 1873 that will never be forgotten by any of her passengers.

During one of her regular trips between New York and Brooklyn this boat suddenly quitted her respectable, though somewhat monotonous, career, and became a common tramp, without port or destination.

The day awoke in fog such as the oldest inhabitant had never seen. The East River was blocked with ice and soon became a shrieking bedlam of groping and bewildering craft, whose pilots could scarcely see their hands before their faces.

At half past nine the "Rappahannock" left Brooklyn, well laden with passengers, and started on her customary trip almost directly across the river—a very short and unusually easy voyage. Before even reaching the middle of the stream, how ever, the ice and fog had thrown her completely out of her course. Back and forth, up and down stream, the pilot vainly groped, amid the shrieking whistles, ringing of fog bells, and loud crash of ice boulders, until, in the confused clangor, he had entirely lost his bearings.

When, after long and perilous battling with ice jams and many hair-breadth escapes from collisions, he suddenly sighted the landing place on the New York side, he found it occupied by a sister boat, which had been driven there to avoid destruction. He backed out, only to be lost again, and for three hours this boat, now become a mere tramp, wandered aimlessly up and down the East River with its load of excited passengers, whose emotions ranged anywhere between the rage and impatience of the belated Wall Street speculator, to whom the delay might mean a loss of fifty thousand dollars, to the hysteria of a nervous little woman 6