Taking an electric flashlight from his pocket, Skeeter sent the glare across to the bulky object looming in the darkness.
“Look at dat!” Hitch Diamond growled. “Dar’s our boat! Dat’s shore de Mud Hen.”
Skeeter reflected the light upon the water beside the boat until it rested upon a canoe.
“Pipe Smash is on dat boat now!” Figger Bush whispered. “I bet he got drunk at de nigger dance an’ is sound asleep!”
“Now, fellers,” Skeeter began, “you listen to me——”
Skeeter talked like a grape-juice orator for five minutes, and his audience of two listened with breathless attention.
After that Skeeter went aboard the boat, climbing the rope hand over hand, and paddled the canoe back for his bundles and his friends.
Pipe Smash lay in a drunken slumber on the deck with his head toward the warm furnace of the engine.
Skeeter untied the boat from a stump, paddled to the Mud Hen, climbed aboard, and let the steamboat drift slowly out into the current.
When they had floated about two miles below Kerlerac, where the heavy woods lay upon each side of the river, Skeeter crawled upon his hands and knees, and from the keg which he had stolen from Gaitskill laid a heavy trail of calcium powder all around the boat.