stopped it, and then, considering that it had run so long against orders, he reversed it and set it to backing without waiting instructions.  Then he seized Munson and woke him, and hurried back to his post.  But the larboard engine had not made three revolutions backward before the boat, hopelessly thrown from her course by the previous neglect, struck the old wharf-boat and sunk it.  But for the promptness and presence of mind with which Wehle acted, the steamboat itself would have suffered severely.  The mate and then the captain came rushing into the engine-room.  Munson was discharged at once, and the striker was promised engineer’s wages.

Gus went off watch at this moment, and the mud-clerk said to him, in his characteristically indifferent voice, “Such luck, I declare!  I was sure you would be dismissed for meddling with Parkins, and here you are promoted, I declare!”

The mishap occasioned much delay to the boat, as it was very inconvenient to deliver freight at that day and at that stage of water without the intervention of the wharf-boat.  A full hour was consumed in finding a landing, and in rigging the double-staging and temporary planks necessary to get the molasses and coffee and household “plunder” ashore.  Some hint that Parkins was on the river had already reached Paducah, and the sheriff and two deputies and a small crowd were at the landing looking for him.  A search of the boat failed to discover him, and the crowd would have left the landing but for occasional hints slyly thrown out by the mud-clerk as he went about over the levee collecting freight-bills.  These hints, given in a non-committal way, kept the crowd alive with expectation, and when the rumors thus started spread abroad, the levee was soon filled with an excited and angry multitude.

If it had been a question of delivering a criminal to justice, August would not have hesitated to tell the sheriff where to look.  But he very well knew that the sheriff could not convey the man through the mob alive, and to deliver even such a scoundrel to the summary vengeance of a mob was something that he could not find it in his heart to do.

In truth, the sheriff and his officers did not seek very zealously for their man.  Under the circumstances, it was probable he would not surrender himself without a fight, in which somebody would be killed, and besides there must ensue a battle with the mob.  It was what they called an ugly job, and they were not loth to accept the captain’s assurance that the gambler had gone ashore.

While August was unwilling to deliver the hunted villain to a savage death, he began to ask himself why he might not in some way use his terror in the interest of justice.  For he had just then seen the wretched and bewildered face of Norman looking ghastly enough in the fog of the morning.