That single exclamation settled my wish for conversation while in the Big Blue River. It had filled my mouth with water, and was very nearly on the point of bringing my first lesson in swimming to a most abrupt close. So I kept my tongue quiet, until at length I arrived drippingly joyous at the further side of the stream.
Horner was, necessarily, there before me, and assisted me to mount the bank.
"I thought, Mose, you told me you couldn't swim."
"Nor could I, Dave! You know, necessity is the mother of invention."
"So it seems," he dryly replied. "I only wish it would find me a new bow for my fiddle. The blackguards smashed that."
"It was lucky," I said, "they left you a whole skin."
"Upon my word! it was so," was his answer.
We then from the summit of the bank looked round us, and saw the welcome glow of our smouldering camp-fires, some half a mile below.
Horner spent the remainder of that night, after our return, in attending to his violin. The truth is, it needed it. I, however, slept soundly, and was awoke on the following morning at an early hour in very fair trim. The truth is, early experience had taught me what the results of bad whiskey are, and led me to refrain from an unhealthy indulgence in that exhilarating class of strong drink. But few of our companions had been as prudent. Brighton Bill and Dave more expressly felt the full effects of it; and with a parched tongue, and a splitting headache, heaped their fullest maledictions upon Marysville, and all the ungodly dwellers in that location, during the whole of that day.
His cold-water bath on the preceding night had, however, so modified the effects of whiskey upon Horner, that I was unprepared to find him so depraved in his appetite for it.