"I jerked back, and Oily Heegan did a high dive from Rush Street that was a geometrical joy. He hit kind of amateurish, doin' what we used to call a 'belly-buster' back home, but quite satisfyin' for a maiden effort, and I reeled him in astern.
"Your Chicago man ain't a gamey fish. He come up tame and squirting sewage like a dissolute porpoise, while I played him out where he'd get the thrash of the propeller.
"'Help,' he yells, 'I'm a drownding.'
"'Ten dollars and costs," says I, lettin' him under again. 'Do you know who you're drinkin' with this time, hey?'
"I reckon the astonishment of the mob was equal to Heegan's; anyhow I'm told that we was favoured with such quietness that my voice sounded four blocks, simply achin' with satisfactions. Then pandemonium tore loose, but I was so engrosed in sweet converse I never heard it or noticed that the 'Detroit' had slid through the draw by a hair, and we was bound for the blue and smilin' lake.
"'For God's sake, lemme up,' says Heegan, splashin' along and look-in' strangly. I hauls him in where he wouldn't miss any of my ironies, and says:—
"'I just can't do it, Oily—it's wash day. You're plumb nasty with boycotts and picketin's and compulsory arbitrations. I'm goin' to clean you up,' and I sozzled him under like a wet shirt.
"I drug him out again and continues:—
"'This is Chinamen's work, Oily, but I lost my pride in the Bridewell, thanks to you. It's tough on St. Louis to laundry you up stream this way, but maybe the worst of your heresies 'll be purified when they get that far.' You know the Chicago River runs up hill out of Lake Michigan through the drainage canal and into the St. Louis waterworks. Sure it does—most unnatural stream I ever see about direction and smells.
"I was gettin' a good deal of enjoyment and infections out of him when old man Badrich ran back enamelled with blood and passe tomato juice, the red in his white hair makin' his top look like one of these fancy ice-cream drinks you get at a soda fountain.