AMONGST THE AMERICANS.

BY F. GERSTACKER.

PART VII.

THE 'tween-deck of the Oceanic presented, by the melancholy light of a single lantern that hung in the centre, a very picturesque scene.

Against both sides, on which the berths were erected in tiers, lay as many men as could find room; and strange and peculiar was the sight, as, from the open bunks, here an arm, there a leg, there a head even, hung out, and the snoring and heavy breathing sounded from every corner. The Oceanic, besides, did not possess sufficient berths for all the passengers; so on the chests and boxes, which were arranged in the centre, lay and hung all sorts of sleeping forms, frequently in the most neck-breaking positions, stealing from the god of sleep an hour of rest, in which they were continually interrupted by the repeated noises and move

ments.

In one corner there sat, by the pale light of an almost expiring tallow candle, two men playing cards, with the silent, earnest manner of those whose happiness or ruin depends on the chances of the coloured pieces of paper.

The lantern had been put out, and gloom occupied the narrow space in which all, with the exception of the two gamblers, lay buried in sleep, when suddenly a head was raised cautiously behind the German's chest-in which he had foolishly stated his money was kept-a pair of restless grey eyes looked round for a moment, and were then fixed immoveably on the two gamblers.

All was silence; only the uniform breathing of the sleepers, or the monotonous sounds of the engines, or, at times, a half-suppressed oath from one of the gamblers, broke the quiet.

The observer gently raised an arm, and carefully examined the padlock that fastened the chest, felt the keyhole, and then, almost noiselessly, produced a number of small keys from his pocket, several of which he tried. At length one fitted; the padlock yielded and fell with a loud crash on the floor, as it slipped through the thief's trembling hand.

"Go to the devil!" a dreamer near him muttered, and stretched forth his long limbs on a chest, which was at the most three feet square, so that his head hung down at one end, his feet at the other.

The thief, alarmed by his own noise as well as the unconscious ejaculation of the sleeper, sank back and remained motionless.

"There's something just fallen," the German's wife said, as she nudged him. "Get up and look!"

"It was something on the engine," the man muttered, half asleep, without paying any further attention to the remark.

The wife listened for a little while, but, as all remained quiet, she fell back again on her pillow.

The thief, after lying for a quarter of an hour nearly motionless behind the chest, opened the iron hasp very gently and cautiously, and, raising the lid a little way, thrust in his arm to feel for the money, which, according to the German's statement, was in it. After feeling several things in it, his hand suddenly fell on the desired object, which consisted of a small, heavy bag, containing the whole wealth

of the poor emigrants. He slowly seized it, and pulled it, as carefully as he could, quite up, to take it out without a sound, when a long Kentuckian, who had been turning and twisting for a long while, woke up just above him, and, stretching his limbs, rose on his elbow as high as the low roof of his bunk permitted..

"Confound the hard mattress !" he said, as he kicked his heel against the bed on which he lay, "and the carpenter too, who has not made the berth long enough for a man who is an inch or two above six feet to stretch himself comfortably. Oh! oh!" he shouted, turning and rolling afresh, “I wish it was morning!"

With lightning speed the thief had withdrawn his hand, which held the booty he so confidently thought his own, and sank back again, grinding his teeth in the shade of the chest.

In a short while the former silence prevailed in the cabin, and carefully and quickly the hidden form of the thief again rose behind the chest, gently raised the lid, pushed in his arm, seized the money-whose position he was now well acquainted with-and, holding the iron hasp firmly with his left hand, to prevent it rattling against the bolt, he pulled out his arm, clutching the treasure securely this time in his iron fingers.

He then let the lid fall, fastened the iron, and was just going to hang on and lock the padlock, when a fresh interruption again prevented him.

"I say, neighbour," a man stretched on the floor close to him cried, in whose face the feet of the man reclining on the chest repeatedly fell, "I wish you'd pay a little more attention to your long walking-sticks, or I'll bite 'em for you! Do you think I placed my brain-pan here for you to wipe your feet on ?"

"Wood-pile! wood-pile!" the mate's voice now sounded through the 'tweendecks. "Wood-pile, boys! Get up here, get up!"

Then he walked round to the various bunks and shook the sleepers, taking little heed whether those he roused were bound to carry wood or not.

Stretching and yawning, the several passengers rose and rubbed their sleepy eyes, looking for their hats and caps-for, in other respects, they were quite dressed-while the mate stirred up the slowest to make haste or "get fixed," as he expressed it; but he still held the lantern close to the face of the other slumberers, to discover those who, in the darkness, would try to get off work.

The suddenly-aroused sleepers made extraordinary grimaces when they opened their eyes and saw a bright flame not three inches from them.

An elderly man lay fast sleeping, with his hands quietly folded over his chest, when the mate bent over him and cried, holding the lantern close to him"Do you carry wood?"

The man, hardly understanding the meaning of the words, but aroused by their sound, opened his eyes, and, seeing the bright light close to him, he hulloed with all his lungs, “Fire!"

"What's up?" asked the mate, springing back in surprise and alarm at the sudden exclamation. "What the deuce are you hulloing so for?" he continued with a laugh, when he saw the other sitting before him, with staring eyes and widely-opened mouth. "Come, man, recover your senses—you won't be hurt!"

"What, in God's name, do you want ?" "Do you carry wood?" the mate asked,

"And that horrid row on that account?" the other asked, opening his eyes still wider.

"Wood-pile-wood-pile!" said the mate, patting the German on the shoulder, who had also got up, but who, when he saw his chest open, rushed up, raised the lid, and, with deadly pallid check and fixed eyes, felt-alas! in vain-after his little treasure, on which his future existence depended. In vain he searched through the poor clothing, with trembling hands; his money was gone, and he stood, helpless and despairing, looking, with lack-lustre eyes, on the scattered articles of dress, while large tear-drops ran down his pale checks!

"Wood-pile-wood-pile, man! Lively! Throw your rags in-don't you hear me?" the mate shouted, when the former, paying no attention, kept his eyes fixed on the open chest.

"All stolen !" he at length muttered gently, and sank on his knees, exhausted by suffering, and covered his face with his hands.

"What the deuce is wrong now ?" the mate said, looking round angrily.

"Some one has stolen all his money," said one of the people, who understood German.

"Stolen!" the wife's yelling voice shouted, guessing the English word, as she rushed among the men with a shriek of terror. "Stolen-all our money? Heavenly Father!" she groaned, when she saw the open, ransacked chest, and her panting husband, a picture of dumb despair; and she sank on her knees by his side. "Wood-pile-hang it," shouted the mate, "out with you! Why are you all standing here gaping? The boat has stopped; settle it all afterwards, but carry in the wood first."

The people who were bound to carry wood went out, but the man remained lying moodily by the chest, while, in frenzied haste, his wife again ransacked the smallest corner in the huge chest, and threw everything out. It was useless. Equally in vain was the result when several applied to the captain and requested a search, which was carried out when the boat started again; but the thief had quietly remained behind, preferring a short stay in a block-house, among the swamps, to the careful examination he would probably have been exposed to on board the boat. The search-which is always a most ungrateful task on board a steamer, where such numbers of dark corner renders the recovery of small stolen goods, if not impossible, still highly difficult-was in vain; but day dawned before further attempts to discover the thief were given up as fruitless. All the passengers seem to feel for the loss of the poor people, excepting the gamblers, who, without noticing in the slightest the noise around, or even inquiring into the cause of it, had remained seated over their game; and when Morning, with her cold hand, dissipated the shades of night, and the first timid sunbeams found their way through the doors and window, they blew out their dim, yellow-burning tallow candle, to continue their game by daylight. In the saloon, however, Simmons made a collection for the poor people, to protect them, for awhile, at least, from the pangs of starvation.

1

The Oceanic pursued her course with extraordinary speed, and one bend after the other of the majestic stream appeared and disappeared again.

Interminable forest, miserably gloomy wilderness, lay on both sides, only here and there broken by the little block-hut of a settler, who had retired to this comfortless solitude-almost cut off from all human society, and left to the mercy

of the musquitos-to sell wood to the steamers traversing the stream: although neither the trees he felled nor the land on which they stood were his property, and his small, low house was almost invisible among the gigantic trunks of the virgin forest that encircled it. With difficulty, either, could the observer recognize, from one of the passing steamers, a clearing in the thick forest, had it not been that a little square of decayed trees, a shining grey shingle roof, that gleamed amongst them and which, it appeared almost inevitable, must be destroyed by one of the colossal decayed trunks at the first puff of wind-as well as a strip of piled wood, close to the bank, revealed the abode of a family. This link in the chain of human society, made the spectator almost involuntarily exclaim, "What, in Heaven's name! could induce men-living, thinking, reasoning beings-even if they wished to retire from their fellows and live apart from all the world, to settle in such swamps, inhabited only by insects, reptiles, and beasts of the forest-where fever and pestilence rage-where the Mississippi overflows its banks, and they are forced, at certain seasons, to carry all their property to a boat, to save it from the greedy waters; while their laboriously-piled stock of wood, carried off and floated away by the wild waters, covers the surface of the river, which in rising left not a place where they could find even a dry spot to bury their dead?".

The blue smoke rose gently from these advance-posts of civilization, and disappeared, driven by the light breeze, amid the summits of the cottonwood-trees which inclosed the small clearing on all sides; while thick underwood and almost impenetrable creeping-plants filled the space between the immense trunks, and formed, as it were, a verdant wall around the spot.

The Oceanic was steaming past one of these clearings, which appeared, how ever, to have been only lately commenced, for the trees which had been blazed had not yet decayed, and no cord-wood was piled up; and only the brightly-glistening roof, formed of freshly-cut boards, as well as a few spotted cows, which were walking behind one another, along a narrow path near the bank-announced the neighbourhood of human beings.

"Hullo! Boat!" a voice shouted acress, and a cloth was waved on a stick. "Will you stop?" the pilot asked the captain, who was standing near him, and looking across to the spot whence the voice was heard.

"Let the boat fall off a little. It seems to be a single man: we'll ask him what he wants."

"Hullo! Boat!" the voice shouted again, more impatiently than before.

The captain rang the bell twice, to let the person on shore know that he had heard him, and would stop; and the vessel went across to the spot where the man was standing.

"What do you want?" the captain shouted, when he got near enough. "Where are you going?—to St. Louis?"

Ay, ay!" the man ashore shouted, as a sign that he understood.

"Do you want to come aboard?" the captain said, somewhat impatiently. "Don't you want to buy a rattling good canoe ?" the other replied, as he held his hands funnel-wise to his mouth.

"You don't want to come aboard?" the captain shouted, half in surprise, half in anger.

"I say, don't you want to buy an uncommon good canoe ?" the hoped-for passenger again shouted.

"Get out with you!" the captain shouted furiously, and he nodded to the pilot to go ahead.

"Ay, ay!" the man on shore shouted, who did not appear to have understood the last reply, and turned quietly on the road back to his cabin.

"Bless my stars, captain!" Simmons grinned, when the former came down into the saloon, "why didn't you take advantage of such a good offer? In truth, the canoe must be very good, if you went across the Mississippi to have it only offered you!"

"You may laugh; but what on earth could I do? If I had landed, the fellow would quietly have gone into the cane-brake, and the deuce himself could not find him there. On such occasions it is advisable to put on a good face."

"Do you believe, then, that he only wanted to sell you?" Simmons asked in surprise.

"Well, what else?" Wilkins replied. "I cannot believe that a man would, in earnest, hail a vessel all across the Mississippi to offer me a miserable canoe, when he knows that all I could do with it would be to use it for firewood!"

"But then it was an uncommon good one!" Stewart said smilingly.

"Don't believe it, captain," Simmons said-" don't believe it. The man was perfectly in earnest; and, if you had landed, he would have remained on the bank, in the firm idea that you intended to look at his canoe. What did a neighbour of mine, on the Atchafalaya, do lately? We had bet a gallon of whisky with a friend that a hog he had just killed weighed twenty score, and not eighteen, as the other stated; and they had agreed, as there were no scales in,the whole neighbourhood, to leave it to the first comer to settle the weight, and take his verdict as final.