“But he can’t do that!” Skippy protested indignantly. “He can’t drive me outa the Minnie M. Baxter ’cause it’s Pop’s home—gee, the only home we got. I gotta stay here till—well, when I leave it, I’ll know I ain’t got any hope that he’ll come back.”
“And don’t I be knowin’ how ye feel, kid? But if Skinner’s put it in Buck Flint’s head that the inlet’s a good buy and the deal goes through, he’ll be orderin’ us out and we’ll be likin’ it. Buck ain’t a bad egg, but Skinner’s runnin’ the works and what he says goes, so it does. Now if he tells us to beat it I’m wonderin’ who’ll be towin’ a barge out o’ this mud whin she’s settled. Why, it’d take a derrick, so it would, an’ even then it’d be a chance.”
Skippy was deeply affected by this news. He could not sleep because of it and long after Big Joe was snoring comfortably he rolled and tossed in his bunk. Then, after a time, he thought of what Tully had said about the barges being too deeply settled in the mud to get them out, and he was so curious about it that he got up to see for himself.
He bundled himself up and slipped out onto the deck in the cold, damp air of an early fall morning. It was not yet dawn but the deep black of night had gone and Brown’s Basin lay silent in a dark gray mist.
Skippy leaned far over aft where the Minnie M. Baxter was settled deepest in the mud. Up forward, the slinking waters of the inlet gurgled plaintively against the keel at high tide. Big Joe was right, he decided with sinking heart; it would take a derrick and more to pull the barge out of her muddy berth.
As he started to step back he noticed a tarpaulin to his right which seemed to be covering some bulky objects. Something that Big Joe had brought aboard, he thought, and curiously he raised one end of it. One glimpse told him enough.
They were stolen ships’ supplies, things that his father had told him a river pirate could easily dispose of to some unscrupulous ship captain. Skippy knew instantly how they had come there and he turned on his heel and had started back for the shanty when a searchlight suddenly fell full upon him.
He crouched out of its glare and needed but to look hastily up the inlet to see that it was the police boat bearing down upon the Minnie M. Baxter.
CHAPTER XIX
DANGER
Feverishly, Skippy set to work and pushed the stolen goods overboard piece by piece. Most of them floated but a moment, then sank out of sight, and the rest floated at a safe enough distance from the oncoming launch to escape the eyes of the police.