The boat passed them on the current, then turned and puffed along the bank through the still water opposite to where they were sitting. A black, chunky, bull-necked negro, the whites of whose eyes shone across the water like china door-knobs, hurled a rope toward them.
“Gimme a turn aroun’ dat stump!” he bellowed, as he stopped the machinery.
While the quartet tied the boat the owner stepped into a little canoe and paddled ashore.
“Howdy, brudders!” he bellowed, as he sat down with them. “My name is Pipe Smash.”
“Us is got names, too,” Skeeter Butts proclaimed, as he introduced himself and his friends. “We been watchin’ you’ boat an’ wishin’ dat we had one.”
Smash hesitated just a second before answering. An eager look flashed in his eyes and vanished. Then he said:
“’Tain’t such a awful rotten dawg’s life fer a nigger—livin’ on you’ own boat. I’s jes’ mournin’ in my mind because I’s got to quit it.”
“How come?” Skeeter asked.
“I’s gittin’ married real soon an’ de gal specify dat she don’t want no home whut floats aroun’ permiscus so dat de chickens don’t know whar to come to roost. She wants me to sell out an’ sottle down on dry land.”
“Dat’s a powerful sensible notion,” Skeeter Butts proclaimed, as his appraising eyes searched the steamboat. “Is you foun’ a buyer yit?”