“Hulloo, twenty-six!” Frank’s shout rang out in the frosty air. “Is the boss in?”
A head appeared at the door of the cabin. “The boss is in, who wants to see him?” it said.
The “Gazelle” rounded to, and tied up to the bank a little below the cabin boat. As soon as the sails were furled, and everything made ship-shape, all four boys visited their friends, and for the greater part of a week spent most of their time aboard the roomy, warm house boat. Arthur improved wonderfully, and all hands began to gain weight and grow fat on the game which they shot.
The crew of the “Gazelle” were almost won over from the more strenuous life of sailing, to the free and easy cabin-boat life, which is the nearest approach to tramping that a dweller on the water can come to. All along the river the boys saw cabin boats drifting slowly along down stream, or tied up in the shelter of little coves near some town. Boats of varying degrees of respectability composed this fleet. Boats well built, clean and always brightly painted, homes of fairly prosperous families, whose head worked on shore while the home was afloat, in such manner saving rent and taxes. Boats built of bits of timber, boards, and rusty tin, shanties afloat, the temporary homes of the lowest order of river people. Theatres, dance halls, dives of various sorts, churches, stores—all had their representatives on the mighty stream. A great host of nomadic people that followed the heat to lower river in winter, and ran up stream from it in summer.
Many of the river people were like the dwellers of No. 26, merely temporary members of the river community, who took this method of seeing the river, and resting from the stress of business.
It was with a feeling of regret that the boys at last took leave of their hosts and went aboard their thoroughly cleaned and freshened yacht. All hoped that the “good-by” they shouted over the fast widening strip of water would prove after all to be only “au revoir.”
“There’s no use talking, boys,” the skipper said gravely, “we’ve just got to hump ourselves and get south, where it’s warm, so that we won’t have to burn so much oil. It’s simply ruinous.”
“All right; if you keep healthy, Art, and we don’t run aground, and the boat don’t get holes punched in her with the ice,” Clyde remarked, “we may see New Orleans before the glorious Fourth.”
“It’s no joke, Clyde,” said Ransom. “I’m almost busted, and I won’t have enough to carry me through the Gulf if we don’t hurry.”
“Like the old coon who hurried up to finish his job before his whitewash gave out,” laughed Frank.