From Sea to Shining Sea (99 page)

“I don’t aim to earn any more, sir,” Collins said.

“That’s good to hear. But then I don’t reckon y’ aimed to earn those, either, did ye now?”

The nearby rowers laughed, and Collins laughed with them instead of taking it in bad humor. William was so pleased with this that he had an impulse to reach down and pat him on the shoulder and call him a good man. But no, it was too soon to ease up on him.

As William walked back toward the cabin, Lewis limped out its door onto the deck, grimacing. His face and hands were covered with red abrasions. Just yesterday afternoon, while exploring a high stone bluff on the left bank, he had got close to the edge, and the stone had crumbled under him, dropping him down the face of a 300-foot cliff. Alerted by the frantic barking of Scannon, William had looked up to see Lewis hanging like a spider on the face of the cliff. Lewis had stopped his fall only by digging his hunting knife into the cliff, thirty feet down. After going up and rescuing him with a rope, William had lectured him.

“You may be my superior officer, but if ye want me to go on with you, promise me no more such foolhardiness as that. Damned if I’ll go back and tell Mister Jefferson, ‘Sorry about your Voyage o’ Discovery, Mister President, but Cap’n Lewis kilt
hisself’fore we could get fifty miles up th’ Missouri.’” Lewis had promised.

Now William and Lewis nodded to each other, and Lewis said, “Hear that water?”

“Aye. Th’ Devil’s Raceground. Cruzatte says it’s right ’round the next bend.” Already they could feel the increased velocity of the current and see dirty brown foam drifting by the boat. “We should put in up by those willows and set the towing party on shore.”

Twenty minutes later, the boat was creeping into the rushing narrows. Half the crew was on shore now, on the left bank, straining forward on the long tow rope, slogging along and stumbling like slaves through rocks and muck and willow thickets, shirtless, pouring sweat, their shoes and trousers heavy with clinging mud, tormented by mosquitoes and black flies. They had the rope over their shoulders most of the time, but often had to snake it high and low to keep it from snagging in brush and branches. This rope was attached to the bow. On board, the rest of the soldiers were laboring on set-poles, and by these combined exertions the
Discovery
began inching forward through a narrow channel formed by a rocky left bank and a mucky midstream island. The current in this channel was fast and turbulent, and gurgled and hissed loudly against the hull. Above its liquid turmoil William could barely hear the curses and the shouted advice among those laboring onshore.

This turbid channel seemed to extend for about half a mile, and at the rate they were moving it apparently would require an hour to pass through it—provided there were no hidden surprises in the muddy water, provided the tow rope wouldn’t break, provided the men’s strength wouldn’t give out.

Cruzatte stood poised like a panther on the bow, watching the water below and the shoreline ahead, while Labiche listened to his directions and moved the bow oar. The soldiers strained on their poles and the heavy vessel crept, just perceptibly. The morning sun was already blistering.

“So far all right,” William said almost an hour later. The troops were gasping, slipping on the sweat-slickened deck. “York, take ’em water.” The slave went along with a bucket and dipper. “Now,” William said, “take one o’ those set-poles, why don’t ye, my man, and apply those great muscles o’ yours.” York looked astonished at this suggestion, but took one and got in line, and Collins whooped once with delight.

The channel was widening now; they had passed the rocks and were abreast of the upper end of the island. “Almost through,” William said. Lewis nodded, grim and anxious.

But the hard labor wasn’t yet over.

Half an hour later they were past the island, above the Devil’s Raceground, rowing now, but the current was still too powerful for oars alone and the towing crew was still laboring along the wooded bank. William watched them with admiration.

When we get above this, he thought, they’ll all merit an extra dram o’ whis—

Cruzatte shouted something, and there were cries from the shore, and then that end-of-the-world sound: the muffled roar of riverbanks caving in. A few hundred yards ahead of the towing crew, acres of wooded riverbank were dropping into the water; hundreds of birds were flying up out of the toppling trees.

Cruzatte yelled again and signaled violently for the helmsmen to steer for the right bank.

“Lay on those oars!” William yelled above the uproar.

Where they found new strength he didn’t know, but they did, and the vessel began to veer toward midstream, away from the collapsing shore. The shore crew stayed where they were, paying out a little rope while getting ready to run in case the part of the bank they were on should start to give way under them.

The
Discovery
was making headway to the starboard shore now, and William was just beginning to plan a way to bring the towing crew across—we’ll ferry ’em over when th’ pirogues come up, he was thinking—when the keelboat suddenly shuddered, and listed so far to the right that he almost fell overboard.

Sandbar!
he thought, scrambling to his feet on the tilting quarterdeck. “Aground!” he yelled.

Now her bow was wheeling to the right; Cruzatte and Labiche both had poles against the hidden bar and were straining to stop the drift. But she was sideways to the swift current now; the water was thundering broadside against her hull, and she was tilting, tilting against the soft, hidden sand. The men on shore were digging their heels into the ground, pulling the long line to keep the boat steady, and the rope was so taut that water drops were popping out of it. For an awful, wonderful moment, the bow stopped swinging, even nudged a few degrees back into the current.

But then the tow line was snagged by a floating tree, stretched one last unbearable inch, and broke. With a sickening swoop, the bow was driven downstream again; the Frenchmen’s poles snapped; the whole long hull was again broadside to the current, and the boat was about to be overset, her starboard rail almost in the water. The men, half by instinct, half by the little river-wisdom they had gained already, were swarming toward the upper rail, Abandoned oars were breaking in the sand or plunging
away in the muddy whorl above the invisible sand bar. William bellowed:

“All hands over the larboard rail and bear down!” He swung himself over the quarterdeck rail to show the way.

They did it. Even those who were non-swimmers—a good half of them—and even York, and Captain Lewis himself, jumped out on the upper side and hung far over the water on straining arms, their feet and seats in the swift, cold, brown water. Scannon barked once and leaped overboard after his master, plunged into the water, and disappeared.

They hung on; they groaned, they yelled; they waited. Their weight on the upper side had stayed the tilting, but it was merely a hanging balance and there was nothing they could do beyond what they were doing, and it seemed just a matter of time.

But then the current helped them, for a change. The sand gradually washed from under the hull, and the bow began to turn downstream, the boat slowly righting herself as she floated off. The men, sopping wet and whooping in triumph, tried to swarm back aboard.

But now the vessel had wheeled end to end and was again coming broadside to the current, now her starboard side, and was cross-current again when her port side hit the next sandbar. Now she began listing that way, and was about to turn over again, and the men, this time not needing orders, scrambled across the deck and flung themselves over the starboard rail. Again they held her in balance; again the current scoured the sand out from under her; again she wheeled, and her larboard side was athwart the current when she sighed onto the third sandbar, just a short way above the upper end of the island. The men went out over the upper side again and hung there.

But now there were only two places she could go next time the sand washed out: against a great, jagged mountain of bleached driftwood on the upper point of the island, or, if she wheeled the other way, into the churning chute of the Devil’s Raceground itself, which now was full of speeding, bobbing trees and root boles from the collapsed riverbank. William was on deck now, glancing around for a recourse. This precious boat had been at the mercy of the Missouri River long enough; the river was going to destroy her. It was time to get her back.

Plunging into the cabin and snatching up a coil of rope, he scrambled back topside and made one end fast to a cleat. “I need strong swimmers!” he yelled.

Among the three or four who clambered toward him were Captain Lewis, Collins, and York, their chests heaving. William
grinned at Lewis and shook his head. He passed the free end of the rope to York and Collins and pointed across the chute. On the far shore were the men of the towing crew, who had been running down through the brush opposite the drifting ship. “Can ye take this to them?” William demanded. York and Collins looked at each other, grinned, and nodded. “Go, then, and keep it out o’ the trees if ye can!”

Holding the new rope, Collins and York leaped off. They were up to their thighs on sandbar for a moment, then their footing was swept from under them and they disappeared under the water. In a moment York’s kinky poll appeared; his scarlet headkerchief had come off and it went away down the brown water. Then Collins’s head emerged, and they struck out for the far shore, strong arms slashing into the water, being borne downstream much faster than they could go across. Somewhere below, Scannon’s deep bark resounded. “Look,” William yelled. The dog was on the island, running back and forth excitedly, stopping now and then to shake out his wet coat, his black ears and pink tongue flapping. He was having a marvelous time. Captain Lewis sighed with relief, then turned to watch York and Collins anxiously.

Huge trees kept bearing down on them, but they kept out of the way. Finally, by the time they reached the other bank and were hauled ashore by their waiting compatriots, most of the debris had already gone down. Now the new rope was carried up the shore and tied to the broken end of the old one, and the towing crew, reinforced by York and Collins, set off up the riverbank once more. The last sandbar dissolved under the hull, and the
Discovery
nosed upstream once again, eight men now on her four unbroken oars, and bit by bit she was rowed and towed up into the open water.

A camp was made in a bright green wood near the Rivière La Charrette, where an extra ration of whiskey was doled out to the chilled, trembling, exhausted, laughing soldiers, and then cooking fires were built. Scannon had been picked up off the island by one of the pirogues and reunited with his happy master.

While pork and pone were being cooked, the hunters George Drouillard and Private Alexander Willard emerged from the woods with four horses they had been bringing up from St. Charles.

“God Almighty!” yelped young George Shannon, pointing at the tow-rope burns on his broad shoulders. “Why didn’t ye bring us them damn nags two hours ago when we needed ’em?”

T
HE
CARPENTERS
CUT
WOOD
AND
MADE
NEW
OARS
THAT
evening. William stood for a while watching John Shields work the new white wood with a drawknife. The work was mesmerizing. Pulled so surely and effortlessly by Shields’s powerful hands, the razor-sharp two-handled knife whisked off long, perfect, curling shavings as if the tough, green ash wood were soft as soap. In ten minutes Shields could produce one perfect oar and a pile of fragrant shavings a foot deep. Shields drawled, still pulling the knife tirelessly, “Sir, that man York o’ yours, he surely amazed me what ’e done today. I never knowed a nigger to voluntair for nothin’ afore. ’Specially anything hard or dangerous.”

That had amazed William, too, even more than Collins’s performance had. York had always liked to brag big and bold, but this was the first time he had ever really put himself on the line, and William had been wondering whether York finally might be, after all these years, undergoing an improvement of character. He looked over toward the mess fires, where York was supposed to be fixing supper. His cookfire was untended and smoky, and he had not even started to fix the food, because he was too busy telling everyone about his heroic swim.

Nay, William thought. ’Twas but a fluke. He’s the same as ever.

S
HOUTS
AT
DAYBREAK
HERALDED
THE
APPROACH
OF
A
LONG
, overloaded dugout with a small crew of Frenchmen. It proved to be Regis Loisel, a fur trader who had wintered 400 leagues up the river, in Sioux Indian country. Lewis had heard of him in St. Louis, and now invited him aboard the
Discovery
to drink coffee and tell all he knew about that long stretch of river.

Loisel, sturdy, smelly, thickly bewhiskered, was mainly in a mood to curse the Sioux. Numerous, well-armed, and arrogant, and partial to the British traders of the North West Company, they often turned back other traders who came up, Loisel said; they had bullied him and forced him to sell his goods at such low prices that he would have no profit this year. The Sioux had come to conceive of all white men as cowards and weaklings, Loisel said. He warned Lewis to be wary especially of a snake of a chieftain called Partizan. Lewis thanked him for the advice, but said:

“I don’t expect we’ll let ourselves be scared back by a snake called Partizan. My own Cap’n Clark here, as you can see, is a copperhead.”

William smiled politely. Lewis’s jokes, he had noticed, were a bit like Brother Jonathan’s.

But he had a conviction that the Sioux were not going to be a joking matter, when the Corps of Discovery reached them.

Twelve hundred miles to their country, he thought, looking out at the Missouri, which now in this morning light looked like boiling mercury. By the time we reach them we might be worn down to our hands and knees by that bedamned river.