"If I only had my hands loose," whispered Pat, "I would smash them two copper skins there in the stern, and run into shore, in spite of the haythen in the other vissel."
"Perhaps they would loosen your hands if you requested them to do so."
"Begorrah! but they won't though."
"You might try it, Pat; make believe your bonds hurt you, and I have no doubt they will loosen them."
After a moment's thought, Pat determined to try the artifice which his fair companion had recommended. Accordingly he began groaning and twisting his face into all manner of contortions, in order to enlist their sympathy for his suffering. It was little sympathy the savages felt for him, but his moans and struggles were so persistent and annoying that the foremost Indian, with one blow of his knife, freed his arms, refusing, however, all his entreaties to do the same thing for his feet.
"Ugh! keep still—kill with knife—don't," said he, threateningly.
Pat Mulroony had succeeded far better than he had dared to hope. He felt considerably elated thereby, and, rising up in his seat, commenced "joking" with his grim captors.
"Ye handles them paddles as if yees was used to 'em. Be the same token, maybe ye is. How is it?"
But the stoical Shawanoes deigned not to notice him, and Pat continued:
"Begorrah, but yer mothers must be proud of sich boys as yees, that is if ye has ary mothers. Do you mind that haythen there in the starn, Virginny? Wal, now, ef I had to make a guess about him, I should say he was a cross between an Irish chimney swaap and a monkey from the South Saas. It must be swate for a gal to be hugged by yees."