A House-Boat on the Styx | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected],
from the 1902 Harper & Brothers edition.

A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE STYX
by John Kendrick Bangs
CHAPTER I
: CHARON MAKES A DISCOVERY

Charon, the Ferryman of renown, was cruising slowly along the Styx
one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on he
chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in ferriage
which in the course of years he had managed to build up.
"It's a great thing," he said, with a smirk of satisfaction--"it's a great
thing to be the go-between between two states of being; to have the
exclusive franchise to export and import shades from one state to the
other, and withal to have had as clean a record as mine has been.

Valuable as is my franchise, I never corrupted a public official in my
life, and--"
Here Charon stopped his soliloquy and his boat simultaneously. As he
rounded one of the many turns in the river a singular object met his
gaze, and one, too, that filled him with misgiving. It was another craft,
and that was a thing not to be tolerated. Had he, Charon, owned the
exclusive right of way on the Styx all these years to have it disputed
here in the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century? Had not he dealt
satisfactorily with all, whether it was in the line of ferriage or in the
providing of boats for pleasure-trips up the river? Had he not received
expressions of satisfaction, indeed, from the most exclusive families of
Hades with the very select series of picnics he had given at Charon's
Glen Island? No wonder, then, that the queer-looking boat that met his
gaze, moored in a shady nook on the dark side of the river, filled him
with dismay.
"Blow me for a landlubber if I like that!" he said, in a hardly audible
whisper. "And shiver my timbers if I don't find out what she's there for.
If anybody thinks he can run an opposition line to mine on this river
he's mightily mistaken. If it comes to competition, I can carry shades
for nothing and still quaff the B. & G. yellow-label benzine three times
a day without experiencing a financial panic. I'll show 'em a thing or
two if they attempt to rival me. And what a boat! It looks for all the
world like a Florentine barn on a canal-boat."
Charon paddled