But anyway, I could see a lot of fellows there and I knew they were all from our troop and that they were waiting to open the bridge for General Grant.

Pretty soon Captain Savage took his pipe out of his mouth and began speaking, only he didn’t notice me only kept looking straight ahead.

“You know how to port a helm?” he said.

I told him no—­not on a big boat like that anyway.

Then he said, “Wall, there’s lots o’ things you got to learn, youngster. 
And there’s one thing about tug cap’ns that you got to learn, see?”

I told him that was what I wanted to do—­learn—­

“Wall, then, I’ll tell you,” he said-this is just what he said—­“I’ll tell you, you are in a mighty ticklish place ’n I don’t just see how you’re going to get out of it.”

For a minute I was kind of scared.

“I ain’t sayin’ you’re not a brisk lot, you youngsters, because you are, and no denyin’.  All I’m sayin’ is you’re in a peck of trouble—­that’s all.”

Then he didn’t say anything only looked straight ahead out of the window and kept on smoking.  Gee, I felt awful funny.

Then I said if we did anything that wasn’t right, cracky, we didn’t mean it anyway, that was sure, and we’d do whatever he said.  And I said I knew it wasn’t right for us to break into Uncle Jimmy’s shanty, because I couldn’t think of anything else we’d done that was wrong.

Then he said, “’Tain’t so much wrong, as ’tis a conflict of rules, as the feller says.  Yer see, the trouble is tug-boat captains are a pretty pesky, ugly lot, as yer can see from me, and when it comes ter services, it’s give or take.  Now I was thinkin’, that if you youngsters don’t let me tow you up as far as Poughkeepsie next week, I’ll just have to write and notify the authorities about Uncle Jimmy and make a complaint.  I kinder don’t like to do it by reason of him being an old veteran, but it’s up to you youngsters.  Either scratch out that rule of yours, or else see Uncle Jimmy lose his job.  Take your choice, it’s all the same to me.”

G—­o—­o—­d night!  Jiminy, I didn’t know what to say to him.  I guess I just stood there staring and he looked straight ahead out of the window and smoked his pipe, as if he didn’t care either way.

Pretty soon he said, “I’m going up to Poughkeepsie next Saturday with a barge, and I’ll give you youngsters till Friday to decide.  You can send me a line to the barge office or the Pilots’ Association, or else you can leave me and old Uncle Jimmy fight it out between our two selves and Uncle Sam.”

The fellows opened the bridge for General Grant to go through and Captain Savage let me out on one of the cross-beams, without even stopping.  He didn’t even look at the fellows as the tug went through, only looked straight ahead of him and puffed away on his pipe, as if he didn’t even know that there were such things as scouts.  We just stood there watching the tug churning up the water, as she went faster and faster until she was gone around the bend.