The current helped us, and, to our satisfaction, we discovered that the apparently clumsy skiff handled excellently and responded bravely to our steady oars. We tore through the Ramparts where the waters lashed the rocks, and out into the breadths below, and then set ourselves to our task, as we traveled through that great uninhabited country. Save for the flying fowl, and a bear that lazily paused from drinking on a distant shore, we saw no living thing, and we did not pause for luncheon, but took turns with the oars. Accustomed as we were to the heaviest work, and in the perfect physical condition that comes from healthful food and clean lives, we did not suffer from the prolonged exertion. Indeed, had our mission been less melancholy and desperate, I, for one, would have enjoyed that steady, rhythmic motion, the gurgling of the water under our bow, the ever-changing scenery at our sides, and the beauties of a perfect day. We did not talk much, but once or twice Shakespeare George, brooding, quoted as if to himself, in a bitter tone, his own version of Wordsworth’s “Gratitude.”
What would have been evening in a more southerly latitude came on, and found us still rowing with that same measured stroke, save that we took shorter turns at the oars, and found the resting spells more grateful. The current carried us closer toward a shore, around a point that seemed blanketed with the evening’s purple haze, and we stopped rowing abruptly at the sound of a rifle shot. Nestled at the foot of a bluff was a squalid little Indian village, and the natives were running excitedly up and down the water’s edge and waving to us. It was evident that the shot had been fired to attract our attention. We headed the boat toward them, and they caught our prow and pulled us up on the shingle before we could protest.
“Come! Quick come!” urged a withered, kindly faced old native, presumably the tyune of this little domain. “White man ’most peluck! Him soon die. Quick come!”
We hastened after him to the big Kazima, a sort of clubhouse which each village of any size possesses, crawled in after him, and when our eyes grew accustomed to the dull, smoke-blackened, raftered interior, lighted only by a huge hole in the upper center over the fire pit through which the soft daylight streamed, we stood above the cause of his solicitude. Our chase was ended; for on the skins, at our feet, lay Laughing Jim.
George knelt beside him, and ran his hand inside the blue shirt that was torn open across the chest, and then looked up at us.
“Somethin’s happened to him,” he said, “feels to me as if he was all shot to pieces.”
At the sound of his voice Laughing Jim opened his eyes a little wildly, then smiled as recognition crept into their clear, but pain-drawn, depths.
“I’m going,” he croaked, with a queer, gasping effort. “You got here just in time. I—I⸺ Drink!”
Bill Davis pulled our little emergency flask from his pocket, George lifted the wounded man up, and gave him a strong sup of the brandy, and it momentarily strengthened him. All our animosity was forgotten now, as we stood there rubbing shoulders with death, such is the queer awe and pity that assails us at sight of the mortally stricken regardless of their merits.
“Who did it, Jim?” asked George, still supporting the dying man’s shoulders and head.