He took out his jackknife, and reaching over, severed the traces. Horace Greeley gave another wallow, and finding himself free, disappeared in the darkness amid a lather of foam. The carriage, now well out in the channel, drifted with the current.
“Don't cry, Pashy!” said the Captain, endeavoring to cheer his sobbing companion, “we ain't shark bait yit. As the song used to say:
“'We're afloat, we're afloat,
And the rover is free.'
“I've shipped aboard of 'most every kind of craft,” he added, “but blessed if I ever expected to be skipper of a carryall!”
But Miss Patience, shut up in the back part of the carriage like a water nymph in her cave, still wept hysterically. So Captain Perez continued his dismal attempt at facetiousness.
“The main thing,” he said, “is to keep her on an even keel. If she teeters to one side, you teeter to t'other. Drat that fox!” he ejaculated. “I thought when Web's place burned we'd had fire enough to last for one spell, but it never rains but it pours.”
“Oh, dear!” sobbed the lady. “Now everything 'll burn up, and they'll blame me for it. Well, I'll be drownded anyway, so I shan't be there to hear 'em. Oh, dear! dear!”
“Oh, don't talk that way. We're driftin' somewheres, but we're spinnin' 'round so I can't tell which way. Judas!” he exclaimed, more soberly, “I remember, now; it ain't but a little past seven o'clock, and the tide's goin' out.”
“Of course it is,” resignedly, “and we'll drift into the breakers in the bay, and that 'll be the end.”
“No, no, I guess not. We ain't dead yit. If I had an oar or somethin' to steer this clipper with, maybe we could git into shoal water. As 'tis, we'll have to manage her the way Ote Wixon used to manage his wife, by lettin' her have her own way.”