Clive Cussler by The Adventures of Vin Fiz

barge was huge, loaded with coal and as menacing as any horrible monster. And it was coming as if steered by an evil hand.
    Lacey and Casey could only look on helplessly as the gap between the two vessels narrowed. The Muddy Queen was picking up speed in reverse, but could she move fast enough to evade the immense black barge? The towboat came pounding around the bend, but it would arrive too late. To Lacey and Casey it did not seem like the steamboat could escape disaster. Closer and closer and closer came the barge. All looked lost. They saw that the steamboat could not get away in time and all her passengers and crew seemed doomed.
    But suddenly, Vin Fiz took matters into her own hands, or should we say wingtips, and dove toward the water. The airplane slowed and hovered over the big black barge. Then she gently descended until her wheels and runners met the pile of coal and she settled in. With her wheels firmly embedded in the coal, Vin Fiz raced her engine until each of her propellers spun and blurred, turning faster than the eye could follow. A great gust of wind blasted past her tail, and Lacey and Casey knew what their airplane was trying to do. She was using all her power to brake the barge's speed down the river.
    For more than two agonizing minutes, nothing happened. Then slowly, very slowly, the barge began to slow down. The change was barely noticeable at first, but the speed finally slackened and the gap between the barge and the steamboat started to widen. Now the towboat could reach the barge in time to prevent a collision. A crewman threw over a rope, and together Lacey and Casey jumped from Vin Fiz and huffed and puffed as they lifted the heavy rope over a bollard, which is a metal post used to fasten towing and mooring lines. (A line, by the way, is nautical talk for rope.) The towboat captain then eased his throttles into reverse and stopped the barge dead in the water.
    Safely back in their seats with safety belts fastened, the twins sat back as Vin Fiz lifted majestically into the air again and made a circuit around the Muddy Queen. A rousing cheer went up from the passengers of the steamboat that echoed up and down the river. Captain Shagnasty loudly rang the boat's bell while yanking furiously on the steam whistle cord. The barge captain also tooted his air horn, adding to the din. One final circle, and at Casey's command Vin Fiz flew over the east bank of the Mississippi and resumed her course, heading toward darkening skies.
    "I'm getting hungry," said Lacey. "Why don't we find a place to eat and sleep for the night?"
    "You're always hungry," Casey muttered, having resigned himself to the whims of girls. He motioned into the fading light at a harvested field beside a group of farm buildings. "Maybe the people who live there can put us up for the night. Mother and Father never turn away people who seek food and shelter."
    Hearing this, Vin Fiz dipped toward the farm and set her wheels down in the yard beside the house just as the sun faded and disappeared over a grove of trees. Casey lifted Floopy from his box to the ground. Happy to be free again, the basset hound ran in circles and barked with delight. The farmer's dog, hearing the commotion, came running from the house and howled at the intruders. It was a big brown and white dog of no particular breed, friendly, with a shaggy tail that wagged like a flag in a strong breeze. The dogs touched noses and danced around each other, happy to see one of their own kind. As the twins neared the front of the house, the farmer came out and approached.
    "Well, well," he boomed good-naturedly. "What have we here?"
    "We were passing over," explained Casey, "and wondered if we might trouble you for a meal and bed for the night. I can pay you two dollars." Being a thrifty lad, Casey did not mention that he still had two dollars in his pocket, one having been left at the cafe in Gold City.
    "Nonsense," boomed the farmer, who had short, curly red hair and a matching