“Just t’other side o’ Nangem’y Reach, too,” continued Billy, “I fell in with a sa’cy little pungy, that brushed up alongside, and seemed inclined to keep company. As the wind happened to freshen up just then, I couldn’t get away from her no how; and the son of a blood of a captin kept bearing me in towards the land until he got me almost right upon a long bar before I know’d it. As the water was several feet deep at the eend of the bar, the pungy could pass right by it without touching; so I had either to cross the bar or go round the pungy. It was a desperate undertaking to try the bar, for ’bout a yard or so wide it was perfectly bare; but I couldn’t think of being beat, so I just stood up in the boat, gathered the line well together in my hands, and with a whoop to the drums, rushed ’em at it.”
“And did you raily cross it, Mr. Harris?” said “Blair,” a little staggered.
“Without turning a shell,” replied Billy.
“And what became o’ the pungy?”
“Why in a little while the wind died away, and she dropped behind, and I saw nothing more of her. I reckon it mad the captin open his eyes, though, to see the way I crossed the bar. But the greatest expl’it ov all was—”
“What, you unconscionable liar—what?” exclaimed I, determined to put a stop to any further drafts upon old “Blair’s” credulity.
“Why, the one you was tellin’ me t’other day ’bout old Neption’s hitching his sea-horses to some big island or ’nother, and pulling it up by the roots, and towing it off with the people and all on it, and anchorin’ it down in some other place that he liked better,” was the unexpected rejoinder.
A reply was deemed unnecessary; and in a few minutes more the cheerful plash of the Bankhead spring was among the sounds we heard not.
XXII.
YANKEE HOMESPUN.
“When I lived in Maine,” said Uncle Ezra, “I helped to break up a new piece of ground: we got the wood off in the winter, and early in the spring we begun ploughing on’t. It was so consarned rocky that we had to get forty yoke of oxen to one plough—we did faith—and I held that plough more’n a week; I thought I should die. It e’en a most killed me, I vow. Why, one day I was hold’n, and the plough hit a stump which measured just nine feet and a half through it—hard and sound white oak. The plough split it, and I was going straight through the stump when I happened to think it might snap together again, so I threw my feet out, and had no sooner done this, than it snapped together, taking a smart hold of the seat of my pantaloons. Of course I was tight, but I held on to the plough-handles, and though the teamsters did all they could, that team of eighty oxen could not tear my pantaloons, nor cause me to let go my grip. At last though, after letting the cattle breathe, they gave another strong pull altogether, and the old stump came out about the quickest; it had monstrous long roots, too, let me tell you. My wife made the cloth for them pantaloons, and I havn’t worn any other kind since.”