I give one look at her—as I thought my last—and I couldn’t help it. If she had asked me dumbly, as she did, to do something ten times as wild, I should have done it; and, with a run, I got well up above Hez afore I jumped in once more, to have the same fight with the waters till I was swept down to the bush where he was.
I’d got my knife in my teeth to cut the bush away, and let him free; but as I was swept against it my weight tore it away, and Hez and I went down the stream together; him so done up that he lay helpless on the water.
Something seemed to tell me to finish him off. A minute under water would have done it; but Jael’s face was before me, and at last I got to the other side, with her climbing along beside us; and if it hadn’t been for the hand she stretched down to me, I should never have crawled out with old Hez—I was that done.
As I dropped down panting on the rock, Jael came to my side, leaned over me, and kissed me, and I turned away, for the next moment she was trying hard, and bringing her husband to, and I was beginning to feel once more that I had been a fool.
I ain’t much more to tell, only that the flood went down ’most as quick as it had come up, and Hez got all right again with his broken arm, and did well. They wanted muchly to be friends; but I kep’ away. I felt as I’d been a fool to save him, and I was kinder shamed like of it; so I took off to ’Frisco, where, after chumming about, I took to going voyages to Panama and back, and the sea seemed to suit me like, and there I stuck to it; and one day a ship comes into ’frisco, where I was hanging ashore after a long drinking bout, and I heer’d as they wanted a man or two to fill up, because a couple had deserted to the diggings.
“Whar for?” I says to the officer.
“Discovering—up North,” he says.
“That’ll do,” I says. “I’m yer man; only I don’t think as you’ll get gold if you finds it, ’cause the water’ll all freeze when you wants to wash it.”
“We want to find the North Pole, my lad,” he says.
“And what’ll yer do with it when yer find it?” I says.