“Murther!” was the first articulate sound of the resuscitated.
“Hush, my good woman,” I implored. “You are all right now. We are starting for the steamer.”
Thereupon, she opened her mouth and uttered a series of screams that made the night hateful, and causes me to shudder yet, when I think of them. The substance of them was:
“Murther! Murther! Murther! Robbery! Robbery! Help! Police! Watch! Watch! Police! Murther! Murther! Watch! Help! Help! Help! Murther! Murther! Murther! Police! Police! Police! Och! ye bloody divils! Murther! Murther! Murther!”
This, however, is but an abridged edition of the original. For five minutes—every one seeming like an age—she continued to scream in this manner, making the old walls of Panama to resound as with the voices of all the fiends.
Had this happened at the piers of any civilized town or city, the gens-d’armes would soon have been down upon us and arrested the whole party; but as it was, we were not molested, and much to our relief, at last succeeded in getting clear of shore, and we glided away toward the steamer in the dim darkness, with our baleful charge.
CHAPTER L.
Exit Smith.
ENOUGH. I need not tell of our arrival at the steamer; of the trouble the sailors had getting the drunken woman up the gang-ladder; of our meeting Briggs there; of his suggesting, while they were tugging away at the again insensible creature, pulling her up step by step, to “send for the baggage-master,” as the proper person to take charge of the immense bundle; of our lying in the harbor five days; of my meeting drunken “Pheel” in Panama, the day after our adventure with his charming bigger half; of his threatening to “punch a hole through” me with a sword-cane, for “running away with” his gentle wife—the proprietor of the Oregonian Shades having told him, on inquiry, that “she went away with that one-legged fellow;”—of our final crossing the Isthmus; of our embarking at last on the crippled Dakotah; of our tedious voyage of fourteen days, from Aspinwall to New York; of the various events on the passage; of the death and burial at sea of a bright little boy, who had eaten too much tropical fruit; of our suffering for cold water—there being no ice on board the miserable ship; of our poor food, and but little of it—being restricted to two meals a day; of the machinery giving out off the coast of Cuba, and our danger of not being able to reach any port; of our being towed by a bark, to whom we showed a signal of distress; of a fire on board, which was happily extinguished; of a hard blow off Cape Hatteras; of our final arrival in New York: et cetera, and all that.
It is proper, in this chapter, to make some disposition of myself, as writers usually do of their principal characters in the concluding chapter. Therefore, prepare to bid John Smith an everlasting farewell.
To wind up by stating that I got married to a beautiful heiress, after the usual stern opposition, but final consent of her stony-hearted old “parient,” and that I settled down after my rambles, and lived to a green old age, would be a very happy termination; but the events narrated are of too recent occurrence, and would appear like anachronisms. So, I must abandon that idea.