"Well, look here; you be looking the other way, and I'll take the skiff, see? Then you won't know anything about it. You can recover it with one of the other skiffs in the slip here."
"How do I know you won't make off down the river in my skiff?"
"All you've got to do is start your engine."
"Nothin' doin'!"
"You get the two dollars first of course."
The skipper let his chair fall forward and slowly rose. He looked past Evan. "Hey, Jake!" he cried to one on the pier. "Wait a minute! I got somepin' t' say to yeh." He stepped to the stringpiece.
Evan thought he had failed—until he saw a hand poked suggestively behind the skipper. Into it he hastily thrust two dollars. The skipper nonchalantly went his ways. Evan stepped aboard the power boat, skinned over the rail, and untied the skiff.
A few strokes of the oars brought him alongside the Ernestina. A steamboat of this type has a wide overhang bounded by a stout timber called the "guard." When Evan stood up in his skiff his shoulders were at the level of the guard. But as the ledge it made was only three inches wide and the gunwale rising above it provided no hand hold, it was a problem how to draw himself up.
He finally drew the skiff down to the paddle-box where the interstices of the gingerbread work enabled him to get a grip. As he pulled himself up he thrust the skiff away with his foot. He climbed back along the ledge to her stern gangway and vaulting over the rail found himself on the narrow deck encircling the stern, which is in marine parlance the "quarter."
All the business of the vessel was on the pier side, and this part was deserted. The sliding door leading to the entrance hall was closed and Evan took care to keep out of the range of vision of anyone who might look out through the panes. He determined to stay where he was until she got under way. A warning whistle had already been sounded. He made himself comfortable on a camp stool.