Read The Mystery on the Mississippi for Free Online

check. Keep your fingers crossed. I know kids like good food, too.”
    “Heavens! We don’t mind what we eat or where we sleep or anything else,” Trixie said quickly. “We have to pinch ourselves to see if we’re really here! It’s surely good of you to let us go on the Catfish Princess. Is she one of those boats out there in the river?”
    “Yes, sirree!” Captain Martin said proudly. “She’s the boat, just coming in to pick up her fleet of barges... the biggest one out there, a nine-thousand-tonner! She’s one of two that the Two-Way Barge Company owns. They’re among the biggest boats in the country right now.”
    Mart shaded his eyes to look. “Wow! Are we ever lucky! When does she sail, sir?”
    “We’d hoped to get away around noon. This business of the new cook has slowed us up a little. We’re towing grain—twenty barges. They’re ready to take the first ten out now. See them lined up two abreast down there in the center of the wharf? Do you want to go out with them or wait for the rest of the tow?”
    “Now!” the Bob-Whites chorused.
    “All right. Do you think you can make it by yourselves?”
    “Sure! As my sister told you, we don’t want to be in the way. Don’t bother. We’ll get aboard all right.” Jim herded the Bob-Whites together, and they hurried down to the dock. A deckhand told them where to board the lead barge and helped the girls step over to its flat top. There they all stood, waving to Captain Martin as a busy little harbor tug took the clumsy load out to join the towboat.
    On board the glistening white Catfish Princess , the Bob-Whites were wide-eyed and curious. Passing the galley, they saw the cook and maids busily opening crates of vegetables, huge carcasses of meat being swung into the mouth of a mammoth refrigerator, and cases of canned goods and gallons of milk being unpacked. Already the enticing smell of roasting meat filled the galley, laced with the tang of baking cherry pies.
    “Up this way,” a maid directed them. “Your cabins are down this corridor. The girls are here, and this four-bunk room is for the boys. Officers’ quarters are on either side of you. I hope the new cook and her husband don’t snore, for they’re right next to you girls.”
    Trixie stood at the door of the stateroom, amazed at its snowy whiteness and comfort. “It’s super! See, Honey, isn’t it perfectly perfect?”
    “There’s a lounge around the corner,” the maid continued, “and there are magazines there.”
    “Thanks again, but, jeepers, we want to go out on deck and watch the river!” Trixie and Honey lifted their bag to the bunk. “We’ll just get out of your way,” Trixie told the maid.
    The wide river stretched all around them. It swarmed with craft of every description—speedboats on their way to Alton Dam; rowboats; and puffing, protesting tugs. Across the river lay Illinois and busy East St. Louis. Ahead of them, as the tow assembled length after length of grain barges, the deckhands swarmed. They were checking and tying and carrying rope lines, wire, and steel chains.
    The visitors watched, wide-eyed. “It’s delirious!” Trixie called. “All this running around, all that loading machinery at the dock, all those deckhands out there swarming like ants....”
    “All the loads they carry—heavy ropes and chains! There’s a kid out there no older than I toting a ton of chain. I saw him on shore before we came out here. His name is Paul. Look at him!” Mart leaned over the rail to watch a curly-haired, deeply tanned boy lower his load. He looked up, grinned, and waved his hand in salute.
    “His uncle is a pilot. Paul wants to be a towboat pilot, too.”
    “It didn’t take you long to get his life history. I didn’t even see you talking to him,” Trixie said.
    “You were too busy stalking that Frenchman. Paul’s been working on this boat for over a year. He said he nearly died at first, because the work was so hard. His uncle got his start as a