The boat was late in leaving the Mobile wharf. Dusk fell as it wallowed noisily and slowly up against the current of the Alabama River, under the great bridge, past Hurricane and the lumber mills. The shores ceased to be cleared. Swamps and forests gathered on each shore, dense jungles of cypress and gum and titi, that belted almost the whole course of the river from Mobile to Selma. Lockwood ate an intensely indigestible supper in the saloon in the company of the dozen or so passengers, mostly silent, malarial-looking up-river farmers. Afterwards there was nothing whatever to do. The passengers smoked for an hour or two on the forward deck, talking in a gentle drawl of cotton and hogs and …
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