- His long neck thrust
forward, his arms twisted behind him to form a shelf for his basket
to rest on; and his stilts of legs every once in a while giving way
under him, as if his knee-joints slipped either way.
"There! I carry no more!" he exclaimed all at once, flinging his
potatoes into the boat, where the Yankee was just then stowing them
away.
"Oh, then," said Zeke, quite briskly, "I guess you and Paul had better
try the 'barrel-machine' - come along, I'll fix ye out in no time";
and, so saying, he waded ashore, and hurried back to the house,
bidding us follow.
Wondering what upon earth the "barrel-machine" could be, and rather
suspicious of it, we limped after. On arriving at the house, we found
him getting ready a sort of sedan-chair. It was nothing more than an
old barrel suspended by a rope from the middle of a stout oar. Quite
an ingenious contrivance of the Yankee's; and his proposed
arrangement with regard to mine and the doctor's shoulders was
equally so.
"There now!" said he, when everything was ready, "there's no
back-breaking about this; you can stand right up under it, you see:
jist try it once"; and he politely rested the blade of the oar on my
comrade's right shoulder, and the other end on mine, leaving the
barrel between us.
"Jist the thing!" he added, standing off admiringly, while we remained
in this interesting attitude.
There was no help for us; with broken hearts and backs we trudged back
to the field; the doctor all the while saying masses.
Upon starting with the loaded barrel, for a few paces we got along
pretty well, and were constrained to think the idea not a bad one.
But we did not long think so. In less than five minutes we came to a
dead halt, the springing and buckling of the clumsy oar being almost
unendurable.
"Let's shift ends," cried the doctor, who did not relish the blade of
the stick, which was cutting into the blade of his shoulder.
At last, by stages short and frequent, we managed to shamble down the
beach, where we again dumped our cargo, in something of a pet.
"Why not make the natives help?" asked Long Ghost, rubbing his
shoulder.
"Natives be dumned!" said the Yankee, "twenty on 'em ain't worth one
white man. They never was meant to work any, them chaps; and they
knows it, too, for dumned little work any on 'em ever does."
But, notwithstanding this abuse, Zeke was at last obliged to press a
few of the bipeds into service. "Aramai!" (come here) he shouted to
several, who, reclining on a bank, had hitherto been critical
observers of our proceedings; and, among other things, had been
particularly amused by the performance with the sedan-chair.
