asked.

"Where shall I see you again?"

He brought in his book of river maps, and together they looked down the
tortuous stream; he rested the tip of his pencil on Yankee Bar below
Plum Point.

"It's a famous pirate resort, this twenty miles of river!" he said.
"I'll wait at Fort Pillow Landing. Or if you are ahead?"

"We'll meet there!" she cried. "I'll surely find you there. Or at
Mendova--surely at Mendova."

She followed him out on the bow deck.

"Just a minute," she whispered, "while I get used to the thought of
being alone again. I did not know there were men like you who would
rather do a favour than ask for kisses."

"It isn't that we don't like them!" he blurted out. "It's--it's just
that we'd rather deserve them and not have them than have them and not
deserve them!"

She laughed. "Good-bye--and don't forget, Fort Pillow!"

"Does a man forget his meals?" he demanded, lightly, and with his duffle
packed low in his skiff he rowed out into the gray river and the black
night.

Having found a lee along the caving bank above New Madrid he
gain-speeded down the current behind the sandbar, but when he turned the
New Madrid bend he pulled out into mid-river and with current and wind
both behind him, followed the government lights that showed the
channel.

He had expected to linger long down this historic stretch of river with
its Sunk Lands of the New Madrid earthquakes, with its first glimpse of
the cotton country, and with its countless river phenomena.

"But Old Mississip' has other ideas," he said to himself, and miles
below he was wondering if and when he would meet the girl of Island No.
10 again.

CHAPTER XXI

Pirates have infested the Mississippi from the earliest days. The
stranger on the river cannot possibly know a pirate when he sees one,
and even shanty-boaters of long experience and sharp eyes penetrate
their disguises with difficulty. How could Gus Carline suspect the
loquacious, ingratiating, and helpful Renald Doss?

Lonely; pursued by doubts, ignorance, and a lurking timidity, Carline
was only too glad to take on a companion who discoursed about all the
river towns, called river commissioners by their first names, knew all
the makes of motors, and called the depth of the water in Point Pleasant
crossing by reading the New Madrid gauge.

He relinquished the wheel of his boat to the dapper little man, and fed
the motor more gas, or slowed down to half speed, while he liste