I MAKE A DANDY FRIEND
That was the first time I ever rode in a tugboat, and believe me, it was
great. I stood right beside the wheel in that little house and pointed
out the channel to Captain Savage all the way up to North Bridgeboro.
That’s one thing I sure know—the channel. Anyway, if you don’t know it,
follow the abrupt shore. But with a tug-boat, good night, you have to be
careful because a tug draws so much water. He was going up there after a
lumber barge, he said.
First, he didn’t say anything, only smoked, and it was like a fog in
there. Pretty soon he said:
“So you youngsters don’t take nuthin’ fer services, huh?”
“We have to do a good turn if we see a chance,” I told him.
Then he wanted to know all about the scouts, how they were divided into
troops and patrols and everything, and after I told him all that, we got
to talking about our vacation and about Temple Camp, and especially
about the house-boat. I asked him if he thought a three horsepower
engine would drive the house-boat up the Hudson, so we could get as far
as Catskill Landing in a couple of weeks.
He said, “It would be more like a couple of years, I reckon.”
“Good night!” I said, “if it takes us two years to get there and we have
to be home inside of a month, I see _our_ finish. I suppose it costs a
lot of money to get towed.”
He said, “Wall now, whin I bring in a Cunarder and back her into her
stall, it stands them in a few pennies.”
“You said something,” I told him.
“’N I don’t suppose your troop has got as much money as the Cunard
Line,” he said.
“Gee, we’ve only got about four dollars now,” I told him; “I suppose we
couldn’t get towed as much as a mile for that, hey?”
“Wall, four dollars don’t go as far as it used ter,” he said; “maybe it
would go a half a mile.”
Then he didn’t say anything, only puffed and puffed and puffed on his
pipe, and kept looking straight ahead of him, and turning the wheel ever
so little. After a while he said there wasn’t water enough in our river
to drown a gold fish, and he didn’t know why we called it a river at
all. He said he couldn’t imagine what the tide was thinking about to
waste its time coming up such a river. He said if a bird took a drink in
the river while he was upstream, it would leave him on the flats. He was
awful funny, but he never smiled.
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.
“You know how to port a helm?” he said.
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.”
For a minute I was kind of scared.
“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.”
G-o-o-d night! Jiminy, I didn’t know what to say to him. I guess I just
stood there staring and he looked straight ahead out of the window and
smoked his pipe, as if he didn’t care either way.
Pretty soon he said, “I’m going up to Poughkeepsie next Saturday with a
barge, and I’ll give you youngsters till Friday to decide. You can send
me a line to the barge office or the Pilots’ Association, or else you
can leave me and old Uncle Jimmy fight it out between our two selves and
Uncle Sam.”
The fellows opened the bridge for _General Grant_ to go through and
Captain Savage let me out on one of the cross-beams, without even
stopping. He didn’t even look at the fellows as the tug went through,
only looked straight ahead of him and puffed away on his pipe, as if he
didn’t even know that there were such things as scouts. We just stood
there watching the tug churning up the water, as she went faster and
faster until she was gone around the bend.
“He’s a kind of an old grouch,” Pee-wee said.
“It’s good you happened to think about how he used that word _desert_,”
Doc said.
Then Connie said he wouldn’t want to be his son and Artie said he
wouldn’t want to be around the house with him on a rainy Sunday, and I
let them go on knocking him, until they got good and tired and then I
said,
“Do you know what he wants to do?”
“I bet he wants us to go and be witnesses against Uncle Jimmy,” Pee-wee
said; “he’ll never get me to be a witness, you can bet.”
“Wrong the first time, as usual,” I said; “he wants to tow the
house-boat up as far as Poughkeepsie for us next week.”
Well, you should have seen those fellows.
“What did you tell him?” Pee-wee yelled.
“I told him that I was sorry, but that scouts couldn’t accept anything
for a service—not even favors.”
“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted; “did you tell him that?”
“Sure I did,” I said, very sober, “and he got so mad he’s going to have
old Uncle Jimmy sent to jail—just because I told him we couldn’t let
him tow us to Poughkeepsie.”
“You make me tired!” Pee-wee screamed, “do you mean to say that if a
fellow does a good turn to another—an old man—and it turns out to be a
good turn on somebody else, and he says—the other one that has a
boat—that he’ll make a lot of trouble for the other one we did a
service for—do you mean to tell me that the other one has a right to
say he’ll make trouble for him, and if he does we haven’t got a right to
let him do a good turn to us, so that the other one we did a good turn
for can get under a bridge—it’s a good turn to let _him_ do _us_ a good
turn, isn’t it? Let’s hear you deny that?”
“You’re talking in chunks,” Doc said; “pick up the words you spilled and
straighten ’em out.”
“Hold him or he’ll fall off the bridge,” Artie said.
“Do you mean to tell me that we haven’t got to let him pay us back so as
to save Uncle Jimmy?” Pee-wee fairly screeched. Oh, boy, you should have
seen him.
“There is yet time,” I said, just like an actor, sort of. I said, “There
is yet time to fool him—I mean foil him. We have till Friday to accept
his offer.”
“Who’s got a pencil?” Pee-wee shouted.