Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/45

 behind her windows; nothing in his appearance or motions or manœuvres added to her confidence.

The boat landed against the bank only fifty yards distant. The man threw an anchor over the stern and then ran a bow line up the bank to a stake which he drove. Watching him nervously, she saw that this was an excellent thing, and resolved herself to remember it, and moor her own craft in that way. It would serve better than to have a spar plank against the bank to keep the boat from pounding.

An old river man, the gasolene boat navigator was quickly in shape for the night. The dark had come. The reach was as lonesome as any from Cairo to Mendova. The last Delia saw of him in the fading twilight that followed sunset was his side-long glances in the direction of her boat.

She lighted her lamp and after a little thinking she left the doors unlocked. She felt that the attack would come either from the bow or stern, and she thought that she would be able to escape if the opposite door was not fastened.

She waited, growing calm the while. The actual presence of the great danger for a river woman, especially for such a pretty girl as she was, seemed to calm her. She sat in the low rocking chair which she had brought for comfort, where she could read, mend, and just sit.