“A skunk!” cried Dick.
“No, a house-boat,” answered Chub with a grin.
“A what? A house-boat?” exclaimed Roy. “What are you talking about? Snip caught a house-boat! Say, you’re too funny for anything, Chub, you are, I don’t think!”
“I didn’t say he’d caught it,” answered Chub, “but he discovered it. It’s lying against the shore near Round Head. Come and see for yourselves!”
[CHAPTER XV]
THE FLOATING ARTIST
Sure enough, there it was; although from where they were it was hard to get a good look at it. So they hurried along the beach until they came up to it. It was lying close against Round Head, its deck almost on a level with the top of the big rock, two ropes—Chub called them “hawsers” and no one dared dispute with him—holding the boat at bow and stern.
The first thing they noticed when they arrived abreast of the boat was a big, handsome red setter watching them intently from his place on the deck. His head lay between his paws and he never moved at their approach, but his brown eyes watched them suspiciously every moment. It was doubtless the presence of the setter which had so excited Snip. Snip was still excited, and said so plainly and at the top of his lungs, but the red setter paid absolutely no attention to him. There was no one in sight on the boat. The four stopped at the edge of the wood and examined the odd craft to their hearts’ content.
For it was odd; there was no doubt about that. In the first place, it was painted in such a funny way. The lower part of the hull was green—a real pea-green like the boat that the Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea in—and above that was a foot-wide streak of reddish-pink, and above that again the hull was finished off in white. She looked very much like a scow with a little cottage on board. There was a suggestion of a bow, however, and a rudder-post arose a few inches above the level of the deck at the stern. In length she was about thirty feet and in breadth about ten. There was a few feet of deck space at the bow and a few more at the stern, just enough to accommodate a small dinghy and leave room to pass, and it seemed just possible to walk along the side of the boat without falling off. But the rest of the deck was monopolized by a cabin, or, more properly, house, some eight feet high. This was painted a dazzling white, while the two doors and the six one-sash windows which faced them were trimmed with green. The top of the house seemed to be something between a promenade deck and a roof-garden. There was a railing about it and it was covered with a faded red-and-white canvas awning. Here and there about the edge were red flower-boxes filled with crimson geraniums which were masses of bloom, German ivy which was already creeping up and along the iron railing and the white-and-green-leaved vinca whose drooping sprays made a swaying festoon along the top of the house. There were several green willow chairs on the roof-deck, a small table holding magazines and books and some bright-hued rugs beneath. At the stern a flight of steps gave access from the deck below, while at the bow the house was crowned with a small pilot-house.