“Just in time!” Dick ejaculated and he shoved Ellery on to the swaying deck as the hawsers were swung loose.
They whirled out into mid-stream and exchanged the fine feminine delights of the brook for the bold masculine ones of the great river, whose craggy banks rose high, like fortifications, forest-crowned. Tangles of woodbine, clematis and bitter-sweet sprawled down over striated rocks. The boat twisted its way through a current that boiled up from below in whirlpools. Here and there huge logs plunged downward like water-monsters, as they threaded between wooded islands, where meek-looking cottontails squatted and twiddled their noses at the passing craft; on, on, until, far off, loomed the boldest highest cliff of all, its top crested by a quaint old slit-windowed round tower of a fort, once a border defense against Chippewa and Sioux, now backed by the sleek lawns of well-groomed officers.
Ellery looked around at his fellow passengers, contentedly munching their peanuts and conversing in broad English flavored with Norse. They were a good-natured assemblage, who choked and snorted and chuckled and whinnied in their laughter. Norris’ eyes were caught by one girl, conspicuously because plainly dressed. As she turned her profile, he glanced at Dick. Dick too was staring at her, and even while Ellery eyed him, he raised his hat and bowed gravely, with a deferential air that became him.
“So,” exclaimed Norris under his breath, “that was why we tore like madmen to catch this boat!”
“It would have been a pity to lose it,” Dick responded innocently. “It is a delicious bit of scenery from here to the fort. I wanted you to see it.”
“Pink and white scenery with yellow curls,” jeered Ellery.
Dick made no reply and Ellery went on.
“She has a young man already. You can’t go and take her away from him. That wouldn’t be playing fair.”
“The man with her is an oaf. He has a loose mouth that wabbles when he opens it to pick his teeth.”
“So you think that though you may not snatch her bodily, you may make her wish to be with you instead of with him, and that the wish will lie fallow in her heart. Dick, you are a student of human nature,” Ellery said, half amused, half irritated.