Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/53

 a clean boat, and except for the odour of cigarettes and a medicine of fragrant smell, it offered no offence to her mind.

The motor was housed in neatly, and the boat was well and handsomely built. It had no name. There was a gun cabinet and a desk built in at the cabin ends of the two narrow staterooms. On the locker seats were stacks of newspapers. A smoking jacket was thrown upon the table with masculine untidiness. The galley contained a few dishes, scraped clean, which needed washing.

She stood in the cabin a long time, wondering what to do. She knew now that the raider, the river pirate, had not returned to his boat. Whether he was dead or alive she could only guess. With difficulty she confronted the situation from the viewpoint of the people to whose customs she had determined to adapt herself.

"I've captured it!" she thought, her cheeks growing warm. "I'd better keep it till I find out whose it really is."

Accordingly, she freed the bow line and hauled in the anchor which was over the stern. Then the boat, which was about thirty-three feet long, floated up the eddy and she pulled it in alongside her houseboat and made it fast, bow and stern, with fenders between the hulls.