Rudder Grange | Page 7

the deck--whichever seems the most appropriate.
But when I reached a bend in the river road, whence I always had the earliest view of my establishment, I did not have that view. I hurried on. The nearer I approached the place where I lived, the more horror-stricken I became. There was no mistaking the fact.
The boat was not there!
In an instant the truth flashed upon me.
The water was very high--the rain had swollen the river--my house had floated away!
It was Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoons our boarder came home early.
I clapped my hat tightly on my head and ground my teeth.
"Confound that boarder!" I thought. "He has been fooling with the anchor. He always said it was of no use, and taking advantage of my absence, he has hauled it up, and has floated away, and has gone--gone with my wife and my home!"
Euphemia and "Rudder Grange" had gone off together--where I knew not,--and with them that horrible suggester!
I ran wildly along the bank. I called aloud, I shouted and hailed each passing craft--of which there were only two--but their crews must have been very inattentive to the woes of landsmen, or else they did not hear me, for they paid no attention to my cries.
I met a fellow with an axe on his shoulder. I shouted to him before I reached him:
"Hello! did you see a boat--a house, I mean,--floating up the river?"
"A boat-house?" asked the man.
"No, a house-boat," I gasped.
"Didn't see nuthin' like it," said the man, and he passed on, to his wife and home, no doubt. But me! Oh, where was my wife and my home?
I met several people, but none of them had seen a fugitive canal- boat.
How many thoughts came into my brain as I ran along that river road! If that wretched boarder had not taken the rudder for an ironing table he might have steered in shore! Again and again I confounded--as far as mental ejaculations could do it--his suggestions.
I was rapidly becoming frantic when I met a person who hailed me.
"Hello!" he said, "are you after a canal-boat adrift?"
"Yes," I panted.
"I thought you was," he said. "You looked that way. Well, I can tell you where she is. She's stuck fast in the reeds at the lower end o' Peter's Pint."
"Where's that?" said I.
"Oh, it's about a mile furder up. I seed her a-driftin' up with the tide--big flood tide, to-day--and I thought I'd see somebody after her, afore long. Anything aboard?"
Anything!
I could not answer the man. Anything, indeed! I hurried on up the river without a word. Was the boat a wreck? I scarcely dared to think of it. I scarcely dared to think at all.
The man called after me and I stopped. I could but stop, no matter what I might hear.
"Hello, mister," he said, "got any tobacco?"
I walked up to him. I took hold of him by the lapel of his coat. It was a dirty lapel, as I remember even now, but I didn't mind that.
"Look here," said I. "Tell me the truth, I can bear it. Was that vessel wrecked?"
The man looked at me a little queerly. I could not exactly interpret his expression.
"You're sure you kin bear it?" said he.
"Yes," said I, my hand trembling as I held his coat.
"Well, then," said he, "it's mor'n I kin," and he jerked his coat out of my hand, and sprang away. When he reached the other side of the road, he turned and shouted at me, as though I had been deaf.
"Do you know what I think?" he yelled. "I think you're a darned lunatic," and with that he went his way.
I hastened on to Peter's Point. Long before I reached it, I saw the boat.
It was apparently deserted. But still I pressed on. I must know the worst. When I reached the Point, I found that the boat had run aground, with her head in among the long reeds and mud, and the rest of her hull lying at an angle from the shore.
There was consequently no way for me to get on board, but to wade through the mud and reeds to her bow, and then climb up as well as I could.
This I did, but it was not easy to do. Twice I sank above my knees in mud and water, and had it not been for reeds, masses of which I frequently clutched when I thought I was going over, I believe I should have fallen down and come to my death in that horrible marsh. When I reached the boat, I stood up to my hips in water and saw no way of climbing up. The gang-plank had undoubtedly floated away, and if it had not, it would have been of no use to me in my position.
But I was desperate. I clasped the