"Eh?" asked Sam. "She's right? Fire under? Then call me late in the morning. I've never yet travelled first class aboard a ship, and this bunk's just lovely. Hallo! That Joe? Eh? He's unconscious? Well, I am sorry; guess there's many a one will say he helped a heap to save this vessel."
They slept profoundly side by side, and the sun was high in the heavens before either opened his eyes. When Joe looked round, it was with a groan of recognition and remembrance. His hands were blistered all over and in bandages. His face was smeared with some greasy preparation, while there no longer trace of eyelashes, eyebrows, or hair. He was bald—a terrible object—with lips and tongue hugely swollen.
"My word," exclaimed Sam, staring at him, "what a sight!"
Joe giggled. After all, however tired, however sore with a struggle, he could look on the queer side of things. "My eye!" he gurgled, for speech was almost impossible. "Just you take a look at yourself; it'll make you feel downright faint, I do assure you." Then he went off into a laugh, which ended in a cry of pain and tribulation, for cracked and swollen lips make laughing painful. As for Sam, he rose in his bunk, leaned outwards, and stared into the mirror. It was with a groan of resignation that he threw himself backward, for, like Joe, he was wonderfully disfigured.
"The wife wouldn't know me," he said. "What a sight! No wonder you giggled."
But time does wonders for sore hearts and sore heads. Five days later, when the ship put into Quebec, both were moderately presentable, though Joe still had his hands in bandages. But think of the reward! A thousand and more disembarked passengers from the steamship Kansas City awaited their arrival and cheered them to the very echo as they landed. It was Joe's welcome to Canada, the land wherein he trusted to make his fortune.
CHAPTER V
One of the Settlers
"Now we get right in to business," said Sam, two days after the ship had brought them to Quebec, and he and Joe had gradually recovered their usual appearance. For, till then, they were hardly presentable, both having had every hair singed from their heads, while Sam, who wore a moustache, as a rule, merely retained a few straggling ends of that appendage. As for Joe, his hands were so blistered, that even now he was able to do little for himself.