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.”
“’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.