One day the household were disturbed by a
singular murmuring noise in the air. It was a
sound as of a long train of carriages upon a
distant railroad, or as the far-off roaring of the
wind in a forest at the coming of a tempest.
But railroads were hundreds of miles away; the
air was calm, the weather was fine. The whirring
rushing sound of immense flocks of migratory
birds on wing is sometimes heard a long
way off, but now no dark cloud of feathery flocks
was seen approaching. While the strangers
listened and wondered, this strange murmuring
grew into a roar, as of distant thunder. The
doctor was considering what possible force in
nature, what disturbing influences, could
produce so sudden and astonishing an uproar, when
one of the negroes laid his ear to the earth.

"Yor!" he cried, with a self-important air,
as he suddenly sprang to his feet again. " Dat
ar come down de ribber."

"The ice has then broken up!" exclaimed
the doctor, and turned towards the river.

Accustomed as the Boston traveller had been
to witness the breaking up of the frost and its
effects on mighty rivers, he had never known it
to be attended by so overpowering a tumult.
It was now like a coming Niagara, and was
accompanied by tremulous vibrations of the
ground. The doctor hurried on; the river
was not far off; and he had barely reached
its banks ere he beheld, rolling, pouring,
tumbling, forward, in one solid wave, a
perpendicular bank of waters, eighteen or twenty feet
high. It was what one can imagine that wall
of waters to have been, "on the right hand and
on the left," through which the Israelites
passed, excepting that this vast volume was
moving onward between its wide banks with
astounding force and speed —dark and dense
with enormous blocks of ice, with crumbling
masses of soil, with stems and roots of forest
trees. The inhabitants had hardly time to contemplate
this vast wave, ere it had gone by, leaving a
murky, tumultuous torrent in its rear. Soon
the ordinary rushing of the rapid river was
all that was heard. In a few hours the wide
high banks were full. In a few days the
turbulent waters had calmed themselves into a
navigable stream.

When the long-anticipated passage-boat
arrived at Van Buren, so great was the
eagerness of the concourse of travellers to
secure berths, so crowded and heavily-laden
was the steamer, that, for the comfort and safety
of the girls under his charge, the doctor resolved
to await a second steamer, and so to avoid the
throng of impatient backwoods-men, and
especially the company of his ruffianly fellow-lodgers,
whose manners had become insufferably familiar.

At last the time came when he and his young
friends might proceed merrily down the Arkansas
River. All went smoothly enough during the
first day's passage, but on the following morning,
to their dismay, they beheld the obnoxious
dwarf and his comrades, and the deck crowded
with horses and mules for which they had been
trafficking. They had come on board during
the night, at a small town where the boat
had stopped, and with them a number of
other passengers. There was no help for it.
When the ungainly horse-dealer stepped boldly
up to the D.D. and the young ladies, and, with
a free and friendly air, held out his hand and
cried, "Hullo, parson, how are ye?" all they
could do was, again to make the best of it.

Traffic on the river having been suspended
for so many months, it was to be expected that
the stoppages were now frequent, the passengers
in eager haste, and the steam on at high pressure.
In that most reckless State of a reckless country,
the danger was very great. At last, as Dr. B. had
along anticipated, the boat struck violently upon
a snag, careened, and stuck fast. The people
and horses rolled, plunging and struggling
across the deck. Many who could swim,
leaped straightway into the river. To those
who could not thus save themselves, death
seemed inevitable; for even if the boilers
escaped explosion, the boat must—every one
thought—go down.

When the D.D. could extricate himself and
recover his feet, he sought his young companions,
assisting and consoling them as best he
could. With all speed the cargo was being
pitched overboard to lighten the boat, rickety
skiffs were being lowered, and, amidst the
utmost confusion, the strong hustled the weak
in their efforts to crowd into them, thus seeming
to risk more certain destruction than if
they took their chance on deck. The doctor
was a poor swimmer, and in the scramble he
had hurt one of his arms.

In that moment of deliberation the young
Cherokee pressed eagerly towards the doctor.
He could swim—easily, swiftly, he said. He
would bear first one and then another to the
shore. Young Neosho also could swim
skilfully. Let the mother trust a child to him,
let them both plunge into the river together,
and, between them, all their friends might be
rescued.

The doctor entreated the Indian youths not
to take to the water till the latest moment.
Meanwhile, he unloosed from his waist a
leathern belt, in which was a considerable sum
of gold. Should the coin drag him down to the
bottom of the river, neither he nor it could
benefit anybody, but if he could manage to
fling it as far as the nearer bank, some
survivor, or perchance some lucky emigrant,
might find it, and turn it to good account.
Wide as the river was, he could but make the
attempt. Quick as the thought he doubled and
redoubled the belt, and was tying it with his
handkerchief to make the better throw, when
the dwarf, who had watched his proceedings,
pushed forward and confronted him. Even at
such a moment, the doctor felt convinced that
this man was about to demand the belt, and
that he would not scruple to enforce his demand
with one of those terrible weapons of his.
Desirous that the robber should not have this
additional crime on his conscience, the doctor
handed it to him without a word.