When we got up to the mill at North Bridgeboro, he got the barge and started downstream with the barge alongside. All the while he kept asking me about the scouts, and I told him about Skinny, and how we were going to take him up to Temple Camp with us, so he could get better, maybe.
Then for quite a while he didn’t say anything, only puffed away and pretty soon we could see the bridge and I knew we’d have to open it again. But anyway, I could see a lot of fellows there and I knew they were all from our troop and that they were waiting to open the bridge for _General Grant_.
Pretty soon Captain Savage took his pipe out of his mouth and began speaking, only he didn’t notice me only kept looking straight ahead.
I told him no—not on a big boat like that anyway.
Then he said, “Wall, there’s lots o’ things you got to learn, youngster. And there’s one thing about tug cap’ns that you got to learn, see?”
I told him that was what I wanted to do—learn.
“Wall, then, I’ll tell you,” he said—this is just what he said—“I’ll tell you, you are in a mighty ticklish place ’n I don’t just see how you’re going to get out of it.”
“I ain’t sayin’ you’re not a brisk lot, you youngsters, because you are, and no denyin’. All I’m sayin’ is you’re in a peck of trouble—that’s all.”
Then he didn’t say anything only looked straight ahead out of the window and kept on smoking. Gee, I felt awful funny.
Then I said if we did anything that wasn’t right, cracky, we didn’t mean it anyway, that was sure, and we’d do whatever he said. And I said I knew it wasn’t right for us to break into Uncle Jimmy’s shanty, because I couldn’t think of anything else we’d done that was wrong.
Then he said, “’Tain’t so much wrong, as ’tis a conflict of rules, as the feller says. Yer see, the trouble is tug-boat captains are a pretty pesky, ugly lot, as yer can see from me, and when it comes ter services, it’s give or take. Now I was thinkin’, that if you youngsters don’t let me tow you up as far as Poughkeepsie next week, I’ll just have to write and notify the authorities about Uncle Jimmy and make a complaint. I kinder don’t like to do it by reason of him being an old veteran, but it’s up to you youngsters. Either scratch out that rule of yours, or else see Uncle Jimmy lose his job. Take your choice, it’s all the same to me.”