Читать книгу The Ark of 1803. A Story of Louisiana Purchase Times онлайн

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“If it were anybody else but Jimmy Claiborne”, he thought, “it would not so much matter.” There were the twenty barrels of peach brandy and whisky—the Claibornes’ share of the cargo—and in the long monotonous days and nights only ceaseless vigilance would keep the men from broaching them. If Jimmy were in the crew, his sense of proprietorship in this portion of the cargo would make the danger of it very much greater.

It was a voyage of untold perils. Every year an increasing number of white outlaws, hidden in the caves along the river, harried and robbed the boatmen who floated down from the upper settlements. There were lurking bands of hostile Indians. And there was the river itself with its treacheries; its snags; its mud bars and its floods. It was no unusual thing for an ark to set out as this one was about to do, provided against all foreseeable disasters, and never be heard from afterward. Some were wrecked, some were robbed and their crews obscurely murdered. But no tidings of their fate came back to the solitary homes on the upper Ohio.