Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/51

 Several pictures hung on the walls, a writing desk, a stack of sectional bookcases, and a clothes press completed the furnishings of the interior of the boat. The floor was plain and bare except for two small rugs.

The workmanship on the boat itself showed the craft of a river carpenter. The frame was braced fore and aft and athwartship, against strains and gales. In each corner of the cabin was a little trap, which might be raised to reveal whether the boat was wet or dry, and supply a place in which things could be hidden or stored. In one corner stood a large tin bilge pump, and holes above the gunwale with shutters over them enabled the skipper to pump out any water that might seep through in a storm.

The boat was equipped with three hundred feet of new half-inch handy line coiled dry under the cot; the inch bow and stem mooring lines had hooks under the wide eaves of the bow and stern, on the walls; an anchor, with one hundred and fifty feet of inch line, rested in a locker on the stern, to swing in an eddy or hold the boat off the banks against the strain of the bow lines—as the gasolene marauder had hauled off his boat.

The more accustomed Delia became to river living, the more she was satisfied with her boat. If she paid a good price for it, she had been well and fairly