And now arose a dispute in which all three of the whites engaged. Waring, who most certainly was the best qualified to judge, expressed it as his firm conviction that a half dozen Shawanoes, at least, were at that moment glaring out from the flat-boat, and waiting for their reappearance. Hezekiah dissented, and persistently maintained that there was but one savage upon the craft, and that he lay in the cabin sound asleep! He could give no satisfactory reason to the others for this belief, but he appeared sincerely to believe it himself. Pat Mulroony, on the contrary, was ready to swear that there wasn't a redskin on the island, flat-boat, either bank, or within five miles of them!
"Be jabers! I'll soon find out."
"How?"
"I am going on the owld flat-boat itself."
Pat's companions begged, entreated, and implored, but all to no purpose. He had resolved to prove what he had argued, and he now prepared to do it.
CHAPTER IX.
A FEARFUL ADVENTURE.
It is not to be supposed that Pat Mulroony was entirely free from fear, when he resolved upon the venture of which we have spoken. The strenuous assertions of Waring, the equally positive belief of Hezekiah, and their united protestations convinced him that they were at least sincere and honest in their efforts to preserve him from harm. Nevertheless, like a genuine Irishman, he sturdily combated them, determined to demonstrate his sincerity by actual experiment.
It is a fact that a man may commence with the assertion of an absolute falsehood, and conscious, at the beginning, that he is defending such, argues himself in time into the belief that it is genuine truth.