The Outdoor Chums On A Houseboat Part 4

"Sure it does," echoed Bluff, enthusiastically. "Fact is, fellows, we've been through so many exciting affairs that nearly everything that happens is bound to make us remember some other adventure. Hey! me to sound the well here, and see if she's taking water fast. Wouldn't be a very nice thing to have our boat go down with us, before we'd been moving an hour."

"Oh! no danger of that, Bluff," Frank remarked, rea.s.suringly; "Mr.

Whittaker told me he had himself looked her all over while she was there in his basin; and he gave me to understand that there wasn't a piece of rotten wood in all her timbers. Fact is, he said she was good for many years yet."

"That sounds all right, Frank, but the best of boats will take water; and I can pump it up right now," Bluff insisted.

"Well, suppose you keep at work," the other continued, obligingly. "I like to have everybody satisfied when I'm sailing a boat. Pump away till you're tired, if you feel that way. It's silly to carry a cargo of water, when we've got such a lot of better things aboard."

So Bluff amused himself with the pump as long as he could get any considerable stream to respond to his muscular efforts.

The other three hung about the sweep; and when Frank thought they ought to work out still further from the sh.o.r.e below the city, he found a pair of eager a.s.sistants to help him man that guiding oar.

Frank could see the time coming when he might not have such willing hands; and when the task of pus.h.i.+ng that sweep would bring out many a grunt and groan from Bluff and Jerry. But everything was new now, and they actually thought it fun to throw their st.u.r.dy young shoulders against the long handle, and bending to the job, urge the boat sideways through the swirling water.

"About when do we think of getting supper?" asked Jerry, after a little time had elapsed, and they could no longer see signs of the city that was situated on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the river.

"Listen to him; would you, Frank?" cried Bluff. "Always wanting to eat, and cut down our stock of rations. Why, it isn't more'n four o'clock yet, and at this time of year it won't get dark till near eight."

"Four hours more!" called out the indignant Jerry; "do you mean we don't get any of that good grub till then? I just won't stand for it, that's what! And I give you fair warning right now, that at five, sharp, I start the fire a-going in that stove. I'm going to get the first meal aboard, because Frank said I might; so don't either one of you open your mouths to say a word."

"Oh! all right," returned Bluff; who had really been managing matters so as to coax Jerry to undertake this part of the drudgery; when he would praise up his cooking in such a way that the other could hardly wait for another meal-time to roll around; "we know there isn't a fellow aboard who can hold a candle to you when it comes to slinging dishes together; that is, if you haven't forgotten, since going to college, all you ever knew in the old days."

"Me forgot how to cook?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jerry, warmly, and falling into the neat little trap in a way that made Frank turn to Will, and wink his eye several times. "Why, I tell you I'm a better hand at it than ever I was.

After you've tasted my supper just you tell me the honest truth; that's all."

"I will, Jerry," said Bluff, keeping a straight face, though Frank knew he was chuckling with delight over the success of his little dodge, "and you can depend on it I'll never try to deceive you. If you can beat the meals you used to dish up in the old times, sure you must be a wonder."

"There's smoke around that bend there, Frank; what do you suppose makes it?" Will asked at this interesting moment.

"I suppose some steamboat is coming up the river," replied Frank.

"That's right," added Bluff, who had very good ears. "The breeze is dead against us, but I can hear the whoof of her escape steampipes as she b.u.t.ts up against the stiff current. I reckon we'll all get used to that grunting sound before we wind up this trip."

"I hope she gives us plenty of room," continued Will, a little nervously, as he planted himself where he thought he could get the best view of the oncoming river boat, so that he could snap a picture of the very first craft they met after starting on their long voyage.

Bluff, being more daring by nature, started to laugh at what Will said.

"You're sure the timid one, Will," he remarked, contemptuously, perhaps, or it might be in a sort of condescending way; "why, the river is big, and there's plenty of room for a dozen steamboats to pa.s.s us by; unless the pilots happen to be taking a snooze at the wheel."

"There she pokes her nose around the bend!" called out Jerry.

"Seems to me, Frank, that she's heading right at us, like there was only one little channel in this big river, and we happened to be sailing down the same. Say, don't you think we ought to get a move on, and pull farther over to the sh.o.r.e?" and Will dropped his camera to the deck, as he laid a hand on the steering oar, which Frank had started to push against once more.

"Jump in, boys, and go at it with all your might!" Frank called out.

Bluff and Jerry began to realize that, after all, a river may be narrow, even if the banks do seem to be far apart; since there can be only fifty or one hundred or two hundred feet in which a steamboat drawing a certain amount of water may with safety proceed.

The boat that was pus.h.i.+ng up the river was indeed heading directly for them. Perhaps the pilot was doing something else in his little cage aloft, for just at the minute none of them could see him there. He may have stooped down to light his pipe, having secured the wheel meanwhile.

"Oh! we're going to be run down right in the start of the trip!"

exclaimed Will, whose face had turned white as he saw the steamboat continuing to head in a direct line for the _Pot Luck_.

"Push harder, boys!" cried Frank, shutting his teeth tight together, and throwing his weight against the bending oar with the ferocity that a bucking "tackle" might show in a battle on the gridiron, when the fate of the game depended on his grappling with the fellow who was running with the ball for a decisive touchdown.

Bluff and Jerry saw how serious the situation was, and they bent every energy in their frames toward doing something that would cause the clumsy houseboat to move out of the way of the oncoming craft.

Already, in imagination, they could hear the crash as the bow cut them down; and the next instant they would be struggling in the current, away out from the sh.o.r.e, and likely to be drawn under the stern wheel of the unattached towboat.

Just then the steersman raised up his head in view in the frame that marked the window of the pilot house. They saw him stare at them as though hardly able to believe his eyes. Then he started to frantically whirl the wheel around, as if hoping to yet avert the accident that seemed so sure. The boat began to respond to his demand, but so slowly that it still looked as though only by what would be next door to a miracle could the _Pot Luck_ avoid being smashed into kindling wood against the bow of the advancing power craft.

And yet, such was the boy's pa.s.sion for his hobby, that Will, leaving the sweep, at which he could not find room beside his chums, sprang over to his camera, and took a picture of the nearby towboat, even while expecting to hear the shock of collision the next minute.

CHAPTER V-THE FIRST NIGHT AFLOAT

"Hard a-port!" the pilot of the river boat was calling.

Fortunately, that was just what Frank had started to do. Had his judgment been at all defective in the start, all would have been lost; for there was certainly no time to reverse, and go the other way.

It was quite an exciting time. Will managed to "snap" the three boys straining at that clumsy big steering oar called the "sweep"; with the towboat apparently dead ahead. It would, doubtless, give him an odd little creep every time he looked at the picture; for of the quartette Will was more inclined to be timid than any of his chums.

Of course the river boat had shut off steam, and was no longer pus.h.i.+ng hard up against the current. Indeed, her stern wheel even began to churn the water wildly, in the endeavor to back, and thus at least lessen the blow, if one had to follow.

It was the onward rush of the houseboat with the current that proved the most dangerous factor in the matter; for there was no means of staying the progress of the _Pot Luck_.

Closer still they came; and Will even gripped a portion of the gunwale of the floating craft, under the impression that a collision was about due; when all of a sudden some new freak of the current seemed to seize the apparently doomed houseboat, for with a whirl the _Pot Luck_ started on a new tack.

They pa.s.sed so close to the side of the towboat that any one of the boys might, had they so desired, thrust out a hand, and touched the planking.

Frank sighed with relief, to realize that after all their voyage was not fated to be nipped in the bud at the very start.

"Hurrah!" cried Bluff; but his voice was too weak for the sound to be much louder than a hoa.r.s.e croak.

The pilot was shaking his fist at them from above as they swept past, and uttering hard words. Little they cared for what he said, since every boyish heart was full of thanksgiving, after the scare. Possibly they were in the wrong, since the channel seemed to be no place for a helpless houseboat likely to be met at any time by an up-river tow that would stretch from side to side.

"Whew! that was a narrow escape, though!" Jerry exclaimed, as he fell back, panting for breath after his labor at the sweep.

"It ought to teach us a lesson while we're on the upper Mississippi,"

Frank remarked, himself willing to rest a bit from his labors.

"You don't mean, I hope, that we ought to learn to talk back, so as to give these river pilots as good as they send?" ventured Will, now recovering from his attack of the "shakes," and hoping none of his mates had noticed how pale he had been.

"That would take years of practice, even if a fellow wanted to try it,"

replied Frank, with a nervous little laugh. "No, what I meant was this: while the river is as small as it is now, with only a certain channel for big boats to follow, we must keep nearer the sh.o.r.e, and out of the pa.s.sage. Then we'll stand no danger of being run down, you see."

"Oh!" remarked Bluff, with uplifted eyebrows; "that's the way it stands, eh? And I was dead sure the fault all lay with that sleepy pilot, He must have been taking a nap, not to see us, till it was nearly too late to keep from smas.h.i.+ng into us."