"Oh," returned one of the women, with the elaborate superiority of a
member of the class of idle rich, "we're just serenadin' 'round."
"Serenading," as she used the word, meant a promenade about the town.
Perhaps the happiness of the negro, here, has to do with the lazy life
of the river. The succulent catfish is easily obtainable for food, and
the wages of the roustabout--or "rouster," as he is called for
short--are good.
The rouster, in his red undershirt, with a bale hook hung in his belt,
is a figure to fascinate the eye. When he works--which is to say, when
he is out of funds--he works hard. He will swing a two-hundred-pound
sack to his back and do fancy steps as he marches with it up the springy
gangplank to the river steamer's deck, uttering now and then a strange,
barbaric snatch of song. He has no home, no family, no responsibilities.
An ignorant deck hand can earn from forty to one hundred dollars a
month. Pay him off at the end of the trip, let him get ashore with his
money, and he is gone. Without deck hands the steamer cannot move. For
many years there has been known to river captains a simple way out of
this difficulty. Pay the rousters off a few hours before the end of the
trip. Say there are twenty of them, and that each is given twenty
dollars.
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