“Hear ye’r goin’ through to ther canal?” It was the evening of the second day when a burly, bearded chap shouted this in a fog-horn voice to Arthur. “Want a tow through, Cap?”
“Here, Ken, is a fellow who wants to tow us to the canal,” Arthur shouted down the open hatch to Ransom.
They did want a tow, and the agreement was soon made, so the tugboat man departed content.
The following afternoon a little tubby, snub-nosed, paintless tug steamed up, and the boys recognized their tugboat man in the pilot house.
“Hello, Cap!” was his greeting. “Ready?”
“Hello, Captain!” Ransom responded. “All ready. Give us a line.”
The hawser was hauled aboard and made fast to the capstan bitts forward, and soon the yacht was on her way once more.
All of the boys had seen the Chicago River before, but never had any of them come so close to the shipping. There were whalebacks for freight, and whalebacks for passengers, steamboats, Great Lake, grain, and passenger steamers, little tugs towing barges ten times their size; sailing craft of all kinds. It was bewildering, and how the little tug ever found a way through the labyrinth was a marvel. All went well, however, though the boys held their breaths whenever there was a particularly close shave, and so were almost continually in a state of suspended animation.
It seemed as if miles of craft of various kinds had been passed, when they came up to an enormous grain steamer which was fast aground. She was surrounded by a mob of puffing tugs, which had been working since the day before to get her off. The steamer and her escorts took up most of the stream, but a narrow lane remained open at one side just wide enough to allow the tug and the “Gazelle” to pass through. There was barely room between the towering sides of the great freighter and the heavily timbered side of the river-bulkhead, but there seemed to be no danger that the great vessel would get off and fill up the narrow passageway. The boys, therefore, told their tug to go on.
The tug entered the open lane and puffed steadily ahead, the yacht following a hundred feet behind. The towboat passed on, and the “Gazelle” came abreast of the freighter’s stern. It overshadowed the small craft just as a tall office building would dwarf a news-stand beside it. The four boys gazed at her great iron sides in admiration and wonder; they could almost touch it.