"Oh! don't go frightening a fellow so!" exclaimed the tailor, half angry, half frightened. "It's bad enough as we are; it only wants that to make it complete. Oh, geminy! these gnats!"
"There never were such gnats as these before," said Schmidt; "and I think the whole kit must have come across to us."
"Oh, no! the Oldenburghers, over yonder, seem to have got a few, too," grinned the shoemaker, maliciously. "One of 'em keeps hitting himself such raps on the face—his nose will be black and blue to-morrow!"
"I'm getting hungry," yawningly said the brewer, who now began to wake up by degrees. "Is it raining still?"
"No; it has ceased raining," said the shoemaker; "but if the little town here is no better paved than the landing-place, good luck to our shoes! there will be work! Whoever has not got bull-hide straps to keep 'em on, will lose them in the mud!"
"Town!" asked the brewer, who had been round the little clearing. "Town! there's no town here, shoemaker—it must be higher up. I wish I could get something to eat!—I'm very hungry, that's a fact!"
"The howling has taken away all my appetite," whimpered the tailor; "blown it completely away, as it were. However, I shouldn't mind a cup of coffee."
"I should like to know where we are to get coffee from here," said Schmidt; "and if we had any, we couldn't drink it out of our hats; I see no cups."
"Well, then, we could unpack some," said the tailor; "but hush! the man there is moving," he continued, in a low whisper, as the woodsman, rising from his seat, drew back the mosquito net, which had hitherto covered the corpse of his wife.