Читать книгу Vandemark's Folly - Quick Herbert - Страница 10

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Captain Sproule had carried me aft from the drivers' cabin to his own while I was in a half-unconscious condition, and out of pure pity, I suppose; but that was the last soft treatment I ever got from him. He came into the cabin just as I was thinking of getting up, and sternly ordered me forward to my own cabin. I had nothing to carry, and it was very little trouble to move. We were moored to the bank just then taking on or discharging freight, and Ace was in the cabin to receive me.

"That upper bunk's your'n," he said. "No greenhorn gits my bunk away from me!"

I stood mute. Ace glared at me defiantly.

"Can you fight?" he asked.

"I do' know," I was obliged to answer.

"Then you can't," said Ace, with bitter contempt. "I can lick you with one hand tied behind me!"

He drew back his fist as if to strike me, and I wonder that I did not run from the cabin and jump ashore, but I stood my ground, more from stupor and what we Dutch call dumbness than anything else. Ace let his fist fall and looked me over with more respect. He was a slender boy, hard as a whip-lash, wiry and dark. He was no taller than I, and not so heavy; but he had come to have brass and confidence from the life he lived. As a matter of fact, he was not so old as I, but had grown faster; and was nothing like as strong after I had got my muscles hardened, as was proved many a time.

"You'll make a great out of it on the canal," he said.

"What?" said I.

"A boy that can't fight," said he, "don't last long drivin'. I've had sixteen fights this month!"

A bell sounded on deck, and we heard the voice of Bill calling us to breakfast. Ace yelled to me to come on, and all hands including the captain gathered on deck forward, where we had coffee, good home-made bread bought from a farmer's wife, fried cakes, boiled potatoes, and plenty of salt pork, finishing with pie. All the cook had to do was to boil potatoes, cook eggs when we had them and make coffee; for the most of our victuals we bought as we passed through the country. The captain had a basket of potatoes or apples on the deck which he used as cash carriers. He would put a piece of money in a potato and throw it to whoever on shore had anything to sell, and the goods, if they could be safely thrown, would come whirling over to be caught by some of us on deck. We got many a nice chicken or loaf of bread or other good victuals in that way; and we lived on the fat of the land. All sorts of berries and fruit, milk, butter, eggs, cakes, pies and the like came to the canal without any care on our part; everything was cheap, and every meal was a feast. This first breakfast was a trial, but I made a noble meal of it. The sailor, Bill, pretended to believe that I had killed a man on shore and had gone to sea to escape the gallows. Ace and Paddy to frighten me, I suppose, talked about the dangers and difficulties of the driver's life; while the captain gave all of us stern looks over his meal and looked fiercely at me as if to deny that he had ever been kind. When the meal was over he ordered Ace to the tow-path, and told him to take me along and show me how to drive.

"Here," he snapped at me, "is where we make a spoon or spoil a horn. Go 'long with you!"

Ace climbed on the back of one of the horses. I looked up wondering what I was to do.

"You'll walk," said Ace; "an' keep your eyes skinned."

So we started off. Each horse leaned into the collar, and slowly the hundred tons or so of dead weight started through the water. The team knew that it was of no use to surge against the load to get it started, as horses do with a wagon; but they pulled steadily and slowly, gradually getting the boat under way, and soon it was moving along with the team at a brisk walk, and with less labor than a hundredth part of the weight would have called for on land. I have always believed in inland waterways for carrying the heavy freight of this nation; because the easiest and cheapest way to transport anything is to put it in the water and float it. This lesson I learned when Ace whipped up Dolly and Jack and took our craft off toward Syracuse.

It was a hard day for me. We were passing boats all the time, and we had to make speed to keep craft which had no right to pass us from getting by, especially just before reaching a lock. To allow another boat to steal our lockage from us was a disgrace; and many of the fights between the driver boys grew out of the rights of passing by and the struggle to avoid delays at the locks. Sometimes such affairs were not settled by the boys on the tow-path--they fought off the skirmishes; the real battles were between the captains or members of the crews.

If there were rules I don't know now what they were, and nobody paid much attention to them. Of course we let the passenger boats pass whenever they overtook us, unless we could beat them into a lock. We delayed them then by laying our boat out into the middle of the canal and quarreling until we reached the lock; under cover maybe of some pretended mistake. Our laying the boat out to shut off a passing rival was dangerous to the slow boat, for the reason that a collision meant that the strongly-built stem-end of the boat coming up from behind could crush the weaker stern of the obstructing craft. Such are some of the things I had to learn.