The Storm Centre by Mary Noailles Murfree — Read

An hour later there was a more significant landfall than the fate of these finny trophies. Few of the river craft kept their dates of arrival with certainty, and this was especially the case with the general packets. Though the water was high, the operations of the Confederates rendered the passage sometimes unsafe, sometimes impracticable. Now and again the Federal authorities pressed a boat into government service for a time and released it to its owners and its old traffic when the emergency was past. Therefore on this dull night, when no sign or news was received of the _Calypso_, overdue some ten hours, the wharf became deserted. Hardly a light showed on the river banks or along the spread of the stream, save indistinct gleams in the misty gloom where the picket boats kept up a ceaseless vigilant patrol. The gunboats, with a vaguely saurian suggestion lay with their noses in the mud. Here and there in allotted berths were the ordinary steamboats with their curiously flimsy aspect, as if constructed of white cardboard, silent, disgorged, asleep. The rafts, the coal-barges, the humble skiffs, and flatboats were all tied up for the night. The town had lapsed to silence and slumber as the hour waxed late. The great pale stream seemed as vacant as the great pale sky.

Suddenly far down the river two lights, close together, high in the air, red and green, shimmering through the mist, struck the attention of a wanderer along the high bluffs near Judge Roscoe's house, even before a hoarse, remonstrant, outspreading sound, the clamor of the whistle three times repeated, hailing the landing, invaded the murky air. It was a spell to rouse all the precincts of the river bank. Lights flickered here and there. Hack drivers, who had given up the expectation of the boat's arrival at any hour that would admit of the transfer of the passengers to the hotel, heard the sound from afar, harnessed their teams in haste, and the carriages came rattling turbulently down the stony declivity to the wharf. Baggage vans, empty and curiously noisy, recklessly jolted along, careening ill-poised and light without their wonted burdens.