The next morning, after eating the very last of their provisions, which they shared impartially with Rusty, they cast the Ark loose from its moorings, and allowed it to drift a mile or two down past the city water front. At length they reached a place of comparative quiet, amid the bewildering number of steamboats, tugs, and barges, by which they were now surrounded. It was just below a great bridge that spanned the river at this point, and here, after half an hour of anxiety and hard work, they finally succeeded in making their boat fast to the levee.
Then, not knowing what else to do, they waited patiently for some hours, in the hope that a customer would appear, and make them an offer for the Ark. But of all the hurrying throngs who passed the place, no one paid the slightest attention to them. Uncle Phin had just decided that it would be necessary for him to go ashore, and in some way make it known that he had a boat for sale, when a stranger came walking briskly toward them, and sprang aboard.
Growling savagely, Rusty would have flown at the man, whom he recognized as the one who had looked into the cabin window the evening before, had not Arthur seized and held him.
“Good-morning,” said the stranger, politely. “Fine watch dog you’ve got there.”
“Yes,” replied Arthur, “he is; but I never knew him to want to bite anybody before.”
“Oh, well,” said the man, “he probably isn’t used to city folks; but he will get over that. I came to ask if this boat is for sale.”
“Of course it is,” replied the boy, delightedly. “We have been hoping somebody would come along who wanted to buy it.”
Then they showed the stranger all over the boat, explaining to him what an unusually fine craft it was, and, before long, had told him all he wanted to know of their history and plans.
He was a shabbily-dressed man; but they were accustomed to seeing such people, and never for a moment mistrusted him when he said that he was looking for just that kind of a boat, in which to take his family to New Orleans for the winter. They only congratulated each other, on securing a customer so readily, by exchanging sundry significant looks and smiles behind his back.
At length he asked their price for the boat, and Uncle Phin, emboldened by his praise of the craft and evident desire to possess her, answered that, as boats seemed to be in pretty good demand, he thought this one ought to be worth twenty dollars.