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Those of them who knew the river, and had shown capacity in business, were made steamboat captains in his service, or steamboat clerks, or wharf-boat managers, or agents, or something else all at fair salaries. It was Captain Will Hallam's practice to make partners of all men who might render him service in that capacity.
A few yards below its mouth, in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the wharf-boat, little more than a landing stage. The hotel was but a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep levee. It was midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep.
From the association's secretary each member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head worded something like this These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage progressed, and deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the first crossing, out from St.
It was late, nearly midnight, as I stepped aboard the wharf-boat. Stragglers from the town, who may have had business there, had all gone away, and the owner of the store-boat was himself absent. A drowsy negro, his locum tenens, was the only human thing that offered itself to my eyes.
It even overcame his lust for liquor. He grew sturdier under his affliction, so that when he arrived at Cairo, and swung his craft smartly up to the wharf-boat, his eyes were clear and his skin was honestly coloured by sunshine and pure winds. Here fortune favoured him with more news of his wife.
"Certain, sir," replied the watchman to whom this question was addressed. "No one else could have come in this skiff, and then gone off in mine by mistake?" "Impossible, sir. I have been wide-awake all night, and there has not been another soul aboard this wharf-boat until just now. Besides, I took that coat from the skiff just after you left it last evening."
So how could Winn Caspar, who had only escaped from the island a few minutes before he and Bim made good their own retreat, have reached the same place and joined that raft without attracting attention? Both the day and night watchmen at the wharf-boat had assured him that no such boy as he described had been seen on the water-front.
When he had paid they followed him out. At the curbstone he said, "Keep together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long." He lifted the battered hat he was wearing, smiled at Susan. "Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em yet!" And away he went a strange figure, his burly frame squeezed into a dingy old frock suit from among Tempest's costumes.
I did not blame the old fellow, for many a time we would have some pretty hard knocks and duckings in our business on the rivers and railroads; but I was well and hearty and then I was of a roving disposition, and enjoyed the life I was leading so I said: "Bill, you go up there and take a rest just as long as you like; but for me, I could not think of settling down on a wharf-boat, with nothing but cow-boys to break the monotony.
Pulling rapidly in to the town shore, shelter was found beneath the overhanging deck of a deserted wharf-boat. We had just completed preparations with the rubber blankets and ponchos, when the deluge came. But the sheltering deck was not water-tight; soon the rain came pouring in upon us through the uncaulked cracks, and we were nearly as badly off in our close-smelling quarters as in the open.
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