["He's not here!" she cried hysterically]
["F. G." he said grimly, "Francis Garrod"]
["Come and get me, white man!" cried Jean Paul, over his shoulder]
JACK CHANTY
I
THE HAIR-CUT
The surface of the wide, empty river rang with it like a sounding-board, and the undisturbed hills gave it back, the gay song of a deep-chested man. The musical execution was not remarkable, but the sound was as well suited to the big spaces of the sunny river as the call of a moose to the October woods, or the ululation of a wolf to a breathless winter's night. The zest of youth and of singing was in it; to that the breasts of any singer's hearers cannot help but answer.
"Oh! pretty Polly Oliver, the pri-ide of her sex;
The love of a grenadier he-er poor heart did vex.
He courted her so faithfu-ul in the good town of Bow,
But marched off to foreign lands a-fi-ighting the foe."
The singer was luxuriously reclining on a tiny raft made of a single dry trunk cut into four lengths laced together with rope. His back was supported by two canvas bags containing his grub and all his worldly goods, and a banjo lay against his raised thighs. From afar on the bosom of the great stream he looked like a doll afloat on a shingle. The current carried him down, and the eddies waltzed him slowly around and back, providing him agreeable views up and down river and athwart the noble hills that hemmed it in.
"I cannot live si-ingle, and fa-alse I'll not prove,
So I'll 'list for a drummer-boy and follow my love.
Peaked ca-ap, looped jacke-et, whi-ite gaiters and drum,
And marching so manfully to my tru-ue love I'll come."