It would be hard to tell whether the tongues or the knives and forks won the race, but certainly both did valiant service. By way of compensation, the starboarders washed the dishes, while the port did the heavy looking on. Soon things were cleared away, and the hinged table was lined with boys reading letters.
“Look at this,” said Kenneth, after a time of quiet, broken only by the crackle of stiff paper. “I had hoped that this would show up about this time. We need it in our business.”
It was a check for $125, and was expected to last them many weeks. The money that Kenneth had saved for this trip had been left in his father’s hands, to be forwarded from time to time as needed, and almost every cent of the little hoard had its particular use.
“Well, don’t be proud,” exclaimed Arthur, “you are not the only one,” and he flourished a money order.
Frank, too, produced one.
“We are bloated bondholders,” the captain said smiling. “But we won’t spend it on riotous living now, or we’ll have to eat and drink Mississippi River water later.”
Arthur was under the weather next day, so Ransom went ashore alone, taking the precious check and money orders with him. He rather despaired of finding any one who would identify him so that he could cash the check; but as luck would have it, he met an acquaintance on the street who made him all right with the bank officials at once. John Brisbane was a pleasant fellow and knew the city thoroughly. He towed Ransom round the town and showed him most of the sights, and even introduced him to some Mississippi pilots. They listened to his tale of what he and the crew had done and intended still to do with polite incredulity for a while, but finally concluding that he was telling them a “tall story,” they began to jeer openly.
“That’s right,” Ransom protested earnestly, a little vexed but still smiling. “We are planning to go around the Eastern United States, and we’ll do it, too.”
After the river men saw that he was in earnest, and that he really intended to put the trip through, they began to tell him things about the river: where to look for this bar, how to avoid that eddy, and where deep water ran round the other bend. Indeed, they gave him so much information about the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans that he was bewildered, and felt as if he were waking up from a dream wherein some one was reading a guide-book of the river, while another called off the soundings of the charts.
When he finally bid good-by to the pilots Ransom felt thankful to get away with his reason intact.