“Brown he stationed at the bow, where, with a long fending-pole in his hand, he was to keep one eye on the floating logs and uprooted trees, the other on the chicken-hearted captain.

“The river surged and boiled and whirled against the boat, tossing her about as if she were a cockle-shell.  With every turn of her wheel she trembled from stem to stern, and with a full head of steam could only stagger along at the rate of three miles an hour.  When night came the captain begged to tie up till morning, for breasting that flood in the dark was sheer madness; but Brown cried out, ’Put her ahead, Gineral Jim,’ and Garfield clutched the helm and drove her on through the darkness.

“Soon they came to a sudden bend in the stream, where the swift current formed a furious whirlpool, and this catching the laboring boat, whirled her suddenly round, and drove her, head on, into the quicksands.  Mattocks were plied, and excavations made round the imbedded bow, and the bowman uttered oaths loud enough to have raised a small earthquake; but still the boat was immovable.  She was stuck fast in the mud, and every effort to move her was fruitless.  Garfield ordered a small boat to be lowered, and take a line to the other bank, by which to warp the steamer free; but the captain and now the crew protested it was certain death to attempt to cross that foaming torrent at midnight.

“They might as well have repeated to him the Creed and the Ten Commandments, for Garfield himself sprang into the boat and called to Brown to follow.  He took the helm and laid her bow across the stream, but the swift current swept them downward.  After incredible labor they made the opposite bank, but far below the steamboat.  Closely hugging the shore, they now crept up the stream, and fastening the line to a tree, rigged a windlass, and finally warped the vessel again into deep water.

“All that night, and all the next day, and all the following night they struggled with the furious river, Garfield never but once leaving the helm, and then for only a few hours’ sleep, which he snatched in his clothes in the day-time.  At last they rounded to at the Union camp, and then went up a cheer that might have been heard all over Kentucky.  His waiting men, frantic with joy, seized their glorious commander, and were with difficulty prevented from bearing him on their shoulders to his quarters.”

The little army was saved from starvation by the canal-boy, who had not forgotten his old trade.  He had risked his life a dozen times over in making the perilous trip, which has been so graphically described in the passages I have quoted.  But for his early and humble experience, he never would have been able to bring the little steamer up the foaming river.  Little did he dream in the days when, as a boy, he guided the Evening Star, that fifteen years hence, an officer holding an important command he would use the knowledge then acquired to save a famishing army.  We can not wonder that his men should have been devotedly attached to such a commander.