Upon the black’s staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that the great gate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby, oblong box, hermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of the box quadrupled the mystery in my mind.
“Is this the wonderful apparatus,” said I in amazement. “Why, it’s nothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed up. And is this the thing, uncle, that is to make you a million of dollars ere the year be out? What a forlorn-looking, lack-lustre, old ash-box it is.”
“Put it into the skiff!” roared my uncle to Yorpy, without heeding my boyish disdain. “Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub—put it in carefully, carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune collapses.”
“Bursts?—collapses?” cried I, in alarm. “It ain’t full of combustibles? Quick, let me go to the further end of the boat!”
“Sit still, you simpleton!” cried my uncle again. “Jump in, Yorpy, and hold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully! carefully! you dunderheaded black! Mind t’other side of the box, I say! Do you mean to destroy the box?”
“Duyvel take te pox!” muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch African. “De pox has been my cuss for de ten long ’ear.”
“Now, then, we’re off—take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the box fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking the box! Easy! there’s a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water at last! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island.”
“The island!” said I. “There’s no island hereabouts.”
“There is ten miles above the bridge, though,” said my uncle, determinately.
“Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in this blazing sun?”