And so there was, and a badly frightened one at that! As he came well within sight, he could be seen waving a garment of some kind in wild and emphatic signals of distress. His voice could soon be heard, calling for assistance in a series of wild yells that would have done credit to an Indian war-dance.
There was great excitement among my fellow citizens for a few moments, and groans of despair at our inability to rescue the stranger were plentiful, when suddenly some one in the crowd yelled—
“Oh, h—l! It’s a d—d Chinaman, ez sure ez shootin’!”
And so it proved to be.
I trust that the philanthropy of my fellow townsmen will not be underestimated, if I frankly state that an unmistakable sigh of relief went up from the crowd when it was discovered that the poor devil whose fate it had just been bewailing, was a despised Mongolian.
The nationality of the hapless passenger in the floating house and the hopelessness of an attempt at rescue, even, if our citizens had been so disposed, served to silence the spectators of the Chinaman’s fate. In justice to my old friends, I will state that I have never doubted that an effort to save the luckless Mongolian would have been made, had any means of rescue been at hand. Not a boat was left in town, and even had there been a hundred at our disposal, it looked like certain death to attempt to traverse the terrific torrent that confronted us.
The Chinaman was apparently clearly doomed, and the end was only a question of minutes, a fact which the poor fellow himself appreciated even more keenly than we did, as was shown by the renewed vigor of his frantic cries for assistance, as he caught sight of the dam that his strange craft was so rapidly nearing.
But, as Big Brown was wont to say, “Nobody hez sich good luck ez er fool, ’ceptin’ a d—d Chinaman.” The house in which the luckless voyager was making his unwilling and terrible journey, caught upon the debris that had accumulated near the center of the dam! Here it remained poised for an instant, almost upon the very verge of destruction, then swinging squarely about in the rushing current, it lodged broad-side to, in such a manner that it came to a full stop and remained motionless.
The unfortunate Chinaman now redoubled his cries for assistance, and the crowd, in silent awe, awaited the giving way of the temporary obstruction and the inevitable destruction of the house and its unhappy tenant.
A moment later, a man was seen to emerge from the scrub pines near the water’s edge upon the opposite side of the river, some distance below Toppy’s cabin. He was dragging a small boat, that had evidently been concealed among the trees.