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Updated: September 14, 2025
The only distinctions that are marked are between the homes of honest industry above the banks and the homes below them of the leisure, which it is hoped is not dishonest. But, honest or dishonest, it is there apparently to stay in the house-boats which line the shores by thousands, and repeat on Occidental terms in our new land the river-life of old and far Cathay.
Perhaps the ladies of the house-boats, when they found themselves as they often did in companies of four or five, had each other in to "evenings," at which one of them read a paper on some artistic or literary topic.
"Yes, I think so; a voice will travel far over the smooth water on a still night like this. Shall I recall them?" Captain Thwaites was silent for a full minute, and we all stood gazing aft at the faint stars on the black water, while to right and left were those that were more dim and distant, being the paper lanterns of the house-boats moored a short distance from the bank.
But with a muffled gasp he sank back again, pale and weak. Awkwardly Val forced him back against his pillows. "It's all right," he assured him again. But in answer the swamper shook his head violently, "It ain't all right in the swamp." In a flash Val caught his meaning. Swampers lived on house-boats for the most part, and the boats will outride all but unusual floods.
To which he replied with this record-breaking joke: "Those are the H's that Englishmen have been dropping for generations, and being characteristic of this solid nation, they thus ossified them." I forgave Jimmie a good deal for that joke. At the pier at Henley a man met us with a little boat and rowed us up the river, past dozens of house-boats moored along the bank.
Keel-boats long, slender, and graceful in form, carrying from fifteen to thirty tons, easily propelled over the shallows, and much used in low water, and in hunting trips to Missouri, Arkansas, and the Red River country. Some of these flats were not unlike the house-boats of to-day.
But the overhauling of our engine meant a voyage under sweeps to a precarious landing among divers packets, house-boats and launches, on Vicksburg waterside, and a later visit to a specialist in diseases of the carburetor; so that, when at last the Sea Rover was ready for the sea again, her chase might have been a hundred miles ahead an she liked.
The rafts were very well, and the house-boats and the traders' boats, but the most majestic feature of the riverlife was the tow of coal-barges which, going or coming, the 'Avonek' met every few miles.
And as for Zuleika, she, as well she might be, was in the very best of good humours. "What a lot of house-boats!" she exclaimed. "Are you going to take me on to one of them?" The Duke started. Already they were alongside the Judas barge. "Here," he said, "is our goal." He stepped through the gate of the railings, out upon the plank, and offered her his hand. She looked back.
The water babbled round them with a tinkling murmur that was like the laughter of fairy voices. They had passed beyond the region of house-boats and bungalows, and the night was very still. At last the man spoke, and the girl gave a queer little motion of relief. "I should like to tell you everything there is to know about me," he said in his careful, foreign English. "But will you forgive me?
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