The Last of the Flatboats

“One of Dickens’s characters said something like that,” responded Ed, “when he was told that the law supposes a married woman always acts under direction of her husband. But both he and you are wrong, particularly you, as you’ll see when I explain. It is absolutely necessary for the law to determine just how far a man’s ownership of land lying along a stream extends. You see that?”

“Of course,” was the general response.

“Yes,” continued Ed, “otherwise very perplexing questions would arise as to what a man might or might not do along shore. Now in England, where our law on the subject comes from, it is a fact that the tide ebbs and flows in all the navigable parts of the rivers and nowhere else. So the law made the tide the test, or rather recognized it as a test already established by nature.

“Now in order that commerce might be carried on, the law decreed that the owner of land lying on a navigable stream should own only to the edge of the bank – or to the ‘natural break of the bank,’ as the law writers express it. This was to prevent owners of the shores from levying tribute on ships that might need to land or anchor in front of their property.

“But on streams that were not navigable, no such need existed. On the contrary, it was very desirable, for many reasons, that the owners of the banks should be free to deal as they saw fit with the streams in front – to straighten or deepen them, and all that sort of thing. So the law decreed that on streams not navigable the owner of the bank should own to ‘the middle thread of the water,’ wherever that might happen to be.

“Now as all these great rivers of ours, the very greatest in the world, by the way, are in law non-navigable, it follows that the men who own their banks own the rivers also, the man on each side owning to the middle thread of water. Naturally, these men could step in and say that nobody should run a boat through their part of the river without paying whatever toll they might choose to charge. Under such a system it would be impossible to use the rivers at all. It would cost nobody knows how many thousands of dollars in tolls to run a boat, say from Cincinnati to New Orleans.”

“Well, why don’t it, then?” asked Will Moreraud. “Why can’t every farmer whose land we pass come out and make us pay for using his part of the river?”

“For the same reason,” said Ed, “that the farmer can’t come out and make you pay toll for passing over a public road which happens to cross his land.”

“How do you mean? I don’t understand,” said Irv.

“Well, the only reason the farmer can’t make you pay toll for crossing his land on a public road is, that the road is made by law a public highway, open to everybody’s use, and it is a criminal offence for anybody to obstruct it, either by setting up a toll-gate, or building a fence, or felling trees across it, or in any other way whatever. And that’s the only reason a man who owns land along these rivers can’t charge toll for their use or put any sort of obstruction in them without getting himself into trouble with the law for his pains.”

“How’s that?” asked one of the boys. “This river isn’t a public road.”

“That is precisely what it is,” said Ed. “Realizing the difficulty created by the fact that this great river system is not legally navigable while its actual navigation is a common necessity, Congress early passed a law making the Mississippi River and all its tributaries ‘public highways for purposes of commerce.’ That’s why nobody can prevent you from running boats on them, or charge you for the privilege.”

The boys were deeply interested in the explanation, which was new to them, and so they sat silent for a while, thinking it over, as people are apt to do when they have heard something new that interests them.

Presently Phil said: —

“That’s all very clear and I understand it, but I don’t quite see what it has to do with where we land at Louisville.”

“Well,” said Ed, “I can explain that. As the river is a public highway for purposes of commerce, nobody can charge you for any legitimate use of it, or its shores below high-water mark, such use, for example, as landing in front of his property, a thing which may be absolutely necessary to navigation. But if a man or a city chooses to spend money in making your landing easy and convenient, say by building a levee or wharf, putting in posts for you to make your boat fast by, or anything of the kind, that man or city has a right to charge you, not for landing, but for the use of the improvements and conveniences.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” said Phil. “Every city does that, and so if you land at its improved landing, you must pay. Well, we’ll land on unimproved shores above Louisville, and above or below every other town that we have occasion to land at. That’s business. But I don’t see why Congress didn’t solve the whole riddle by adopting a new rule as to what are and what are not navigable streams.”

“What rule?” asked Ed.

“Well, the common-sense rule, that a stream which is actually navigable shall be regarded as navigable in law.”

“Actually navigable by what?” asked Ed. “There isn’t a spring branch in all the country that isn’t actually navigable by some sort of boat. Even a wash-basin will float a toy boat.”

“Oh, but I mean real boats.”

“Of what size?”

“Well, big enough to carry freight or passengers.”

“Any skiff drawing three inches of water can do that. Such a rule would include Indian Creek and Long Run, and even all the branches we go wading in, as navigable streams. And then again, some streams are practically navigable even by steamboats at some seasons of the year, and almost or altogether dry at others. This great Ohio River of ours, in its upper parts at least, goes pretty nearly dry some summers. No, I don’t see how any other line than that of the tide could have been drawn, or how the other difficulty could have been met in any better way than by declaring the Mississippi and all its tributaries ‘public highways for purposes of commerce.’ That was the simplest way out, and the simplest way is usually the best way.”[1 - Ed’s exposition of the law and the reason for it is sound enough. But different states, by statutes or court decisions, have somewhat modified it, particularly as regards the extent of bank ownership. Probably Ed knew this, but didn’t think it necessary to go into details, which, after all, do not change the general truth. —Author.]

“Yes,” said Irv Strong, “and as the simplest way to relieve hunger is to eat, I move that we stop talking and get dinner.”

The suggestion was accepted without dissent, and the two whose turn it was to cook went below to start a fire in the stove.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT HAPPENED AT LOUISVILLE

Just before the landing was made at Louisville, Jim Hughes was seized with an attack of cramps and took to his bunk, where he remained until near the time for the boat to be afloat again. The boys had feared that he might go ashore there and get a new supply of liquor, and they had even made careful plans to prevent him from bringing any aboard. His sudden sickness rendered all their plans superfluous.

At Louisville Phil got a fresh supply of newspapers, giving all the latest news concerning the great bond robbery, and took them aboard to read at leisure. He learned that there was no need of hiring a pilot to take the boat over the falls, which in fact are not falls at all, but merely rapids. At very high water such as just then prevailed, the only difference between that part of the river called the falls and any other part was that that part had a much swifter and far less steady current than prevailed elsewhere.

“I could take your money for piloting you over the falls,” said the genial old pilot to whom Phil had applied, “but it would be robbery. I’m a pilot, not a pirate, you see. All you’ve got to do, my boy, is to put your flatboat well out into the river and let her go. She’ll amble over the falls at this stage of the water as gently as a well-built girl waltzes over a ball-room floor. She’ll turn round and round, just as the girl does, but it’ll be just as innocent-like. There’ll be never less than twenty-five foot o’ water under your gunwales, and there simply can’t any harm come to you. Don’t pay anybody anything to pilot you over. Do it yourself, and if anything happens to you, just let old Jabez Brown know where it happened, please. For if there’s any new rocks sprouted up on the falls of the Ohio since the water rose, an old falls pilot like me just naterally wants to know about ’em.”

After laying in the provision supply that was needed, including especially a big can of milk packed in a barrel of cracked ice, Phil returned to the boat and announced his purpose of “running the falls” without a pilot. It was at supper in the cabin that he made the announcement, and Jim Hughes, who had been lying in his bunk with his face toward the bulkhead, suddenly sat up.

“Good!” he said. “They ain’t no use fer a pilot when the river’s bank full this way. When’ll you start, Phil?”

“Just after daylight to-morrow morning,” replied the captain.

“Well, I feel so much better,” said Jim, getting out of his bunk, “I think I’ll sample the pork and potatoes and throw in just a little o’ that hot corn bread and the new butter for ballast.”

“For a man who a few hours ago was violently ill with an intestinal disorder,” remarked Irv Strong a little later with a very pronounced note of sarcasm in his tone, “it seems to me, Jim, that you’re eating a tolerably robust supper. Now if I’d had the cramps you’ve been suffering from to-day, I really wouldn’t venture upon cabbage and potatoes boiled with salt pork. I’d try something ‘bland’ first, like a half pound of shot or a pig’s knuckle, or a bologna sausage or a few soft-boiled cobble-stones.”

But Jim was deaf to the sarcasm and went on eating voraciously.

“Wonder what that fellow is afraid of,” said Phil to Irv as they went out on deck to set the lights and make ready for the night.

“Don’t at all know,” responded Irv, “unless he owes money to somebody in Louisville. All I know is that he must have feigned that attack of cramps, else he couldn’t eat now in the way he does. He didn’t want to go ashore with you as you proposed, to hunt for a falls pilot.”

“Yes,” said Ed Lowry, “I’ve known all day that he was shamming, because he hasn’t had the slightest touch or trace of proper symptoms. Even when he professed to be in the most excruciating pain his pulse wasn’t in the least bit disturbed. I’m no doctor, but I know enough to say positively that a man with any such cramps as he pretended to have simply couldn’t have kept his pulse calmly beating seventy-two times a minute as his did. I timed it three times and then quit bothering with the fellow because I knew he was shamming.”

“Wonder what he meant by it,” said Will.

“Shoo!” said Constant; “he’s listening at the top of the gangway.”

“And I wonder what that means,” said Phil, whose alert observation of the professed pilot had never been relaxed since the episode at Craig’s Landing; “I wonder what he’s listening for.”

There was naturally no response, for the reason that nobody had anything to suggest. So the boys went toward the bow where the anchor-light hung, to hear Phil read in his newspapers all the latest details about the great bond robbery. They read on deck rather than in the cabin, because one boy must at any rate remain there on watch, and they all wished to hear.

The newspapers related that one of the gang of robbers was believed to have got away with the stolen bonds and money, and that the main purpose now was to find him. One man connected with the crime was already in custody, and from hints given by him it was hoped that he might turn state’s evidence in his own resentment against the “carrier of the swag,” who, it was believed, had deserted his fellow thieves, or some of them, and meant to keep the whole of the proceeds of the robbery for himself and one or two others. At any rate, the man in custody had given hints that were thought to be distinctly helpful toward the discovery of the “carrier” and his partners who had betrayed the rest of their fellows.

The case was very interesting, but the boys must be up early in the morning, so at last they broke up their little confab, and all but one of them went to bed. Constant Thiebaud, who first reached the ladder-head, found Jim Hughes seated there with his head just above the deck.

“I thought you were in bed long ago,” said Constant.

“So I was,” said Jim; “but I got restless and came out for some air.”

It wasn’t at all the kind of sentence that Jim Hughes was accustomed to frame, and the boys observed the fact. But they had got used to what Irv Strong called Jim’s “inadvertent lapses into grammar,” and so they went to their bunks without further thought of the matter.

CHAPTER X