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Diamond Tolls. Raymond S. Spears
Читать онлайн.Название Diamond Tolls
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066065850
Автор произведения Raymond S. Spears
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
The cabin-boat was twenty-two feet long, eight feet wide, and seven feet six inches from the bottom of the hull to the eaves of the cabin roof. The cabin was twelve feet long, which left five feet for the length of each deck, ample room for pulling the sweeps or to sit and watch the banks move by.
The cabin, divided into two parts, had a little kitchenette of a galley, leaving the living room eight feet square. The partition jutted out from each wall only a foot, so that there was practically only one room. A curtain served in the doorway, but Delia left the curtain open so that she could see both doors from where she sat.
Her bed was a low, thirty-inch wide folding cot covered with a woven Indian blanket, which made it look like a lounge. There were four chairs, one for the kitchen, a comfortable wicker rocker, an armchair, and a dining-room chair.
The ceiling was the roof of the boat, with the stanchions and sheeting all painted a light blue. The walls were painted white. The curtains on the four side windows were dark green and very heavy. 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 treated, and the old river ship carpenter had built and well found her boat for her.
She retired on this night with a new feeling of satisfaction, and with no qualms of fear. Her thirty-eight calibre automatic guaranteed her against intrusion. Her experience had proved that she could take care of herself without question.
She yielded to an impulse to say a prayer which was of thanks, blew out her light, and retired. For a time she listened to the spattering and pattering of the waves along the hull, and then drifted into sleep from which she did not awaken till after sunrise in the morning.
When she stepped out to look at the gay river from the stern deck, she was surprised to see the gasolene crusier still moored to the bank. She had expected it to be gone.
"Why—why, he must have—perhaps he's drowned!" she whispered, her imagination bringing up the possibility that she had shot too well.
Then she wondered if he might not have crawled back on board the motorboat and be lying there injured. This thought worried her, and she hurried down the bank, not neglecting to take her automatic with her.
She hailed the cruiser from the bank several times, and hearing no reply she climbed on board. It was 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.
She cleaned house in her capture; scrubbed and aired and shook out everything. She ransacked her prize, seeking to discover whose it was. In one locker she found a black sheetiron box, which was locked. She picked the lock with a wire hairpin and cried out with astonishment at what she saw within:
There was a thick brick of yellow-back currency the top bill of which was for one hundred dollars. Besides this brick was a square, black leather case, and when she opened it there were long, narrow envelopes by the score. She unfolded one, and uttered a cry:
"Why—it's a diamond. They've all got diamonds in them!"
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