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Nelia, who could row a skiff with any one, set her shanty-boat sweeps on their pins, coiled up the two bow lines by which the boat was moored to the bank, and which the river woman untied, then rowed out of the eddy and into the main current. "It's good floating right down," Mrs. Tons called after her, "till yo' git to Grand Tower Rock thirty mile!"
Then the captain looked at Thad, sizing him up from the crown of his head to his toes, after which he thrust out his hand and said heartily: "Tip us your fin, Thad, my lad. It would be cruelty to separate two such good shanty-boat mates as you. I'll find something for you to do aboard, and by thunder you'll see the world together.
The Doctor found up there a new phlox and a pretty pink stone-crop, to add to our herbarium, while here as elsewhere the bignonia grows profusely in every crevice of the rock. At dark, two ragged and ill-smelling young shanty-boat men, who are moored hard by, came up to see us, and by our camp-fire to whittle chips and drone about hard times.
Is the storm going down any, d'ye think, Maurice?" But Maurice could not say that it was in the least. "I wonder how long this measly old storm is going to keep us here?" Maurice was saying, that afternoon, as he stood on the after-deck of the anchored shanty-boat, and looked at the wild scene out on the raging river. They had seen not a sign of life thus far around them, since dawn.
The noises on the neighbouring boat grew fainter in the low rumble of a stormy wind out of the northwest, and the shanty-boat lifted at intervals on a wave that rolled out of the main current and across the eddy, making their operating room even more unstable.
But evidently the man must have determined that, with a gun in their possession, the boys were not to be easily taken by surprise, for he did not show up during the entire night, much to the relief of both young shanty-boat cruisers. Perhaps he had no companions to back him up in a desperate enterprise; or it may be that the comforts of his own cabin appealed too much to him on this stormy night.
Nelia could have remained there indefinitely, but restlessness was in her mind, as long as she had so much money on board her little shanty-boat. Disbon knew so many tales of river piracy that she saw the wisdom of settling her possessions, either at Cairo or Memphis, whichever should prove best.
"Yo' maw said he was a drinkin' man, an' I said to myse'f, from my own 'sperience.... Yo' set inside yeah, Nelia. I'll go down theh an' talk myse'f. We come near buyin' that bo't yistehd'y. Leave hit to me!" Nelia sat down in the shanty-boat, and waited. She had not long to wait. A tall, rather burly man returned with the woman, who introduced the two; "Mis' Crele, this is Frank Commer.
It all seemed so easy now that she considered the sequence of her inspired moves. Drifting near another shanty-boat, she passed the time of day with a runaway couple who had come down the Ohio. They had dinner together on their boat. A solitaire and an unscarred wedding ring attested to the respectability of the association.
Vernon, forming a gigantic horseshoe as it were, the last part of the turn bringing the voyager with his face into the northeast. Throughout the whole livelong day the little shanty-boat continued to sweep along with the current, which was something like four miles an hour at this point though it exceeds that considerably when the river rises, or the wind comes out of the north and east.
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