“Yes,” remarked Josh, with a wide grin, “we may be towing the Wireless back home yet; and it wouldn’t be the first time, either, Jack.”
“Well, hardly,” mused the skipper, smiling himself as memory carried him back to other scenes connected with their numerous cruises in these same boats.
“Does George know that we expect to tie up at noon, and have a bite ashore; or will he be silly enough to want to rush along that way, and get to the island long before we think of pulling in there?” Josh went on to ask.
“He knows our plans all right,” answered the other, “though you can never tell what George will do, he’s so full of notions. But as stuff to eat is aboard the roomy Comfort, and we’re carrying the rest, unless he wants to starve poor old Buster, so as to cut down his weight, and make less ballast for the speed-boat to carry, I guess he’ll haul in about eleven and wait for us.”
“Oh! I don’t envy Buster his job of holding down that bucking broncho of a Wireless,” Josh chuckled. “I c’n see him right now, sitting there, holding on, and looking like he was tryin’ to accommodate his breathin’ with the panting of the engine, while George he looks daggers every time Buster gulps in a wad of air at the wrong time.”
“Oh! come now, Josh, it isn’t quite so bad as all that,” declared Jack, with a shake of his head. “And even George couldn’t keep Buster from having his own way, once he gets started. It’s good he learned how to swim long ago, because chances are, he’ll be overboard more than once before this voyage is done.”
“Mebbe George’ll throw him over, when he gets nervous, and Buster keeps wobbling around, making the boat roll to beat the band, eh, Jack?”
“Well, you know how that is yourself, because that’s what happened when you had the job of crew aboard his boat,” the skipper of the Tramp went on to say; which reminder seemed to afford Josh considerable amusement, to judge from his laughter.
They went on steadily, putting mile after mile behind them. Now and then some river craft was encountered, though these were of course not near so numerous as would have been the case below the confluence of the Missouri and Ohio with the Father of Waters. Sometimes it was a steamboat that was breasting the current; or it might be a plodding towboat, with a barge or two alongside. And then again they overtook a queer looking shantyboat, which had the appearance, with its cabin, of a cheese box on a raft.