Saturday afternoon five o'clock
`` He takes the loss of them boys harder 'n what I 'd ` a ' thought he would , '' said the younger pilot . And Watson replied : `` Yes , but he do n't take it as hard as what , years ago , he tuck their fust refus 'n' to go with him on the river . '' They said no more all the way up Rampart Street to Canal , out Canal to the steamboat landing , and across the levee to the _ Enchantress _ . An hour later they stood in her wheel-house , looking down on the same Saturday afternoon five o'clock scene that Watson and Ned had thus contemplated from the _ Votaress _ a hundred months before . Here were the same vast piles of harvest wealth , the same crowds and little flags , the same shouting and tumult only grown greater , the same open sky -- though of October -- the same many-pillared cloud of black smoke , the same smartly painted bumboats selling oranges , bananas , pineapples , corals , and seashells -- many of the latter treated with puritanic art , having , that is , the Lord 's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid . Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it , its water low yet still mast-deep , its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey , its white gulls flashing about the steamers ' pantry windows . Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here , finally , the same public hope and pride grown wider and loftier in their last affluence before entering that purgatory of civil war which now seems but a bad dream outlived .