This belief was finally confirmed by a good-natured boatman of whom they made some inquiries, and who told them that the craft for which they were looking had been boarded and taken away by a couple of men more than two hours before. They had of course floated off down the river, and the boatman said the only thing for them to do was to hire a tug and go after her.
As this would have cost at least twenty dollars, and as they did not have a cent, it was of course out of the question. What were they to do? And what was to become of them?
It was now late in the afternoon, and in addition to being very tired they were very hungry. This latter unpleasant sensation was evidently shared by poor Rusty, who began to whine and look pleadingly up into his young master’s face. To add to their misery, the dense smoke clouds that had been hanging lower and lower over the city now enveloped it entirely in damp, sooty folds, and a cold, drizzling rain began to fall.
Poor Arthur felt so utterly wretched that he would have cried, but for the remembrance that he was a Dale.
CHAPTER XIX.
PENNILESS WANDERERS IN A STRANGE CITY.
Friendless and penniless in a strange city; cold, wet, and hungry, with night near at hand. This was the present condition of little Prince Dusty and his Uncle Phin, as, realizing that they had been cruelly deceived and robbed by the stranger who had proposed to purchase their boat, they turned slowly away from the river. They knew not where to go; but, moved by the impulse that prompted them to seek shelter from the storm, they walked toward the buildings on a street that fronted the broad, sloping levee.
If they only had something to eat, their future might not seem so dark. Then they could talk over their situation and decide upon some plan. Now they could neither talk nor think of anything but the terrible hunger that turned their strength into weakness and drove every other thought from their minds.
It was now twenty-four hours since they had eaten a satisfactory meal; for their mouthful of breakfast had only whetted their appetite for more. Uncle Phin had known what hunger was before, and was thus somewhat prepared to bear its sufferings. Even Rusty’s patient dog nature enabled him to suffer in silence, only revealing his misery by an occasional whine, and by appealing glances at his young master’s face. To this same young master, however, the hunger wolf had never seemed so fierce, nor so terrible, as now. Many a night had the fatherless boy been sent to bed by his Aunt Nancy without any supper, and at such times he had been very hungry; but never had he imagined such a longing for food as he now experienced.
“Oh, Uncle Phin!” he moaned, “can’t you think of any way to get something to eat? Just a loaf of bread or some crackers. It doesn’t seem as if I could stand it much longer.”
“Well, Honey! my pore lil honey lamb! de ole man is a rackin his brain, an a projeckin, an a thinkin, and it’s mo’n likely he’ll strike up wif some plan dreckly. You see des yeah ’sperience hab kim up powerful sudden, an its umposserbilities hab tuk me by ’sprise. Now we might sell dat ar dorg Rusty fer ernough to buy a squar meal, ef we know’d whar to fin a pusson what wanted a dorg.”