A solitary pillow-case of coarse sheeting, stuffed with hay, was the only thing like bedding discoverable. Here I threw myself without undressing and tried to sleep; but there were more lodgers with us, bred, I suppose, by the sand, than even the good-hearted fellow would have willingly accommodated,—that is, if he felt them as I did. Before morning, however, youth and fatigue got the better of them, and I slept soundly.
CHAPTER VIII.
TAKEN PRISONER.
ARISING refreshed, I sallied forth early on the wharf to amuse myself. In the course of an hour it occurred to me suddenly—out of no more previous thought or care about the matter than I had had the night before on the subject of a lodging—that I had had no breakfast, and could not say exactly where I was going to get any.
The good-natured face of my late bedfellow again suggested itself to my mind, and I returned to the sand-scow. There he was in the little coop of a cabin, just partaking of his morning meal, which consisted of a small baker’s loaf and a teacup of molasses. Still humoring my scruples as to direct begging, I gave him to understand, affirmatively, that I did not know where to get my breakfast.
Without uttering a word, the good fellow broke his loaf in two and gave me half. In fact, I cannot recollect that he ever asked me any questions; if he did, they were of such a kindly nature as not in any way to suggest the ignominious close of my free career by capture, and that is why, I suppose, I have forgotten them. We dipped our bread by turns into the teacup of molasses very amicably, and took alternate draughts of the pure river water from the same tin dipper.
Even now as I write I can see again the strange light in his honest eyes, just behind the surprise with which they regarded me, when, our simple meal over, I drew slowly from my pocket my five copper cents, and placed them in his hand. Of course, he would not take them. It was, no doubt, because they were my entire wealth that I straightway received the impression that he thought them too much for his somewhat meagre hotel accommodations, and so I recalled to his memory that he had also loaned me his small boat the afternoon before.
“Never mind, never mind,” he said; “put your money away. You can take the small boat again if you want to.”
These were his exact words; and there was more true feeling in the way he said them than would go to make up many a longer speech I have since heard, in the pathos of melodrama, where the hero has magnanimously refused vast estates and lacs of rupees. (If the reader will excuse the parenthesis, I should like to be allowed to say, right here, God bless that young fellow—or middle-aged fellow now—wherever he is!)
Whether a sudden apprehension of future and direr exigencies, or a gleam of my usual delight in small boats, or both together, flashed across my mind at that moment, I am not now prepared to state; but I remember I did put my money away, and, climbing down again into the little yawl, amused myself by imperilling my life once more in the swift current. This time, however, I ventured merely on short coasting voyages around the docks. At least, I had not yet come to a decision about the feasibility of taking in something foreign in my way, being in the very act of casting a pair of longing eyes at the Canadian shore, when I was hailed by my friend of the sand-scow, and requested to bring the boat to land.