The cheering signs continued. An hour later they descried several white men seated in canoes and fishing near shore. They exchanged the courtesies of the day with them and passed on, growing more eager as they neared the goal.
It would have been no difficult feat of the imagination for one standing on shore to fancy that the cause was a pocket edition of a Hudson River steamboat, so powerfully did Tim O'Rooney puff at his pipe, the whiffs speeding away over his shoulder in exact time with the dipping of the paddle, as though the two united cause and effect. The fellow was in the best of spirits. Suddenly he paused and commenced sucking desperately at his pipe-stem, but all in vain; no smoke was emitted.
"What is the matter?" asked Elwood.
"Steam is out, and the paddle won't go."
"Let me relieve you."
The boy used it with good effect, while Tim shoved his blunt finger into the pipe-bowl, shut one eye and squinted into it, rattled it on his hand, puffed at it again, turned his pockets wrong side out, then put them to rights, and repeated the operation, just as we open the door a half-dozen times to make sure our friend isn't behind it, then gave one of his great sighs and looked toward Howard.
"I put the last switch of tobaccy I had in the world into that pipe, just arter throwing myself outside of that quince of fish."
"Quience?" laughed the boy, "you mean quintal."
"Yis, and what's to come of Tim O'Rooney, if he doesn't git some more right spaddily. His intellect toppled all the mornin', and can't stand another such strain, or it'll be nipped in the bud afore it has reached the topmost round at the bar of fame."
"Why, Tim, you are growing poetical," called Elwood over his shoulder, not a little amused at his bewildering metaphors.