Summary
A garrulous riverboat captain—equal parts P. T. Barnum and river-rat Sisyphus—transforms his creaking stern-wheeler into a roving carnival of commerce, plastering every pier post, tavern door, and hitching rail with gaudy handbills that trumpet an imminent auction of ‘unimaginable marvels.’ Between whistle stops he stage-manigans passenger ire into ticket sales, promising treasures that may be nothing more than dented trombones and moth-chewed petticoats. The voyage itself becomes a floating bazaar: deckhands hawk chestnuts, the barkeep doubles as auctioneer, and Wilna Wilde’s wide-eyed stowaway—half gamine, half Cassandra—watches the skipper’s hucksterism metastasize into minor myth. By the time the soot-belching boat wheezes back to the depot, the auction has metastasized into a referendum on appetite itself: who will bid, who will bluff, who will jump ship when the boiler finally coughs its last?
Synopsis
The skipper advertises an auction by tacking up bills on every convenient spot while making a run from the depot and stopping every few feet, to the disgust of the passengers.
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