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Joyce, who was a man of method, and was accustomed to telling off troops, counted no less than forty-nine of these idlers, most of whom were lounging near the log entrenchment, though a few were sauntering about the clearing, conversing with the wood-choppers, or making their observations listlessly, and seemingly without any precise object in view.
Corkey, Lockwin and forty wood-choppers are saved on the raft. The captain goes down on his ship, refusing to live longer. "You bet!" comments the laboring, perspiring Corkey. Corkey is a short man, short in speech. This "full account" is a grievous responsibility, for marine reporters are taught to "boil it down." The raft goes to pieces in mid-sea, and the survivors take to the yawl.
She is all the while planting the oaks amid the pines without our knowledge, and at last, instead of government officers, we send a party of wood-choppers to cut down the pines, and so rescue an oak forest, at which we wonder as if it had dropped from the skies.
Then we catch them wood-choppers, and they are no earthly good. But I'm mighty sorry for 'em. Then I reckon we take up Lockwin, and he ain't no congressman, neither. I'm the congressman. Don't you forget that. He die off the point in the boat. We see the point, and we sherry out of that yawl. Hey, there, you moke ain't that about so?" "Yessah!" stammers the mascot.
Though the wood-choppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples.
It has been half an hour since the Africa went down. There still are cries. To all these, Corkey replies: "Come on! all you fellers that has life-preservers!" But it is incredible that any more should get in the yawl. Nevertheless, one, two, three, four, five, six wood-choppers arrive in the next half-hour, and all are saved. Tugging for dear life, Corkey holds his boat against the wind.
A trolley-car moved around a circular track and stopped regularly at all stations; an engine and train of cars moved jerkily up and down a steep grade and through a tunnel; a windmill was busily pumping water from the dishpan into the copper skillet; a sawmill was in full operation and a host of mechanical blacksmiths, scissors-grinders, carpenters, wood-choppers and millers were connected with a motor which kept them working away at their trades in awkward but persevering fashion.
On their way thither, they surprised and killed a party of wood-choppers down on the Pawnee Fork, as well as some herders who were guarding beef cattle; some seven or eight men in all, were killed, and it was evident that the Indians meant business. The soldiers with the wagon whom I had met at the crossing of the Pawnee Fork had been out for the bodies of the men.
It was dismal work, and the raw recruits were full of the same imaginary terrors which have haunted other heroes less severely tested: the monkeys never rattled the cocoa-nuts against the trees, but they all heard the axes of Maroon wood-choppers; and when a sentinel declared, one night, that he had seen a negro go down the river in a canoe, with his pipe lighted, the whole force was called to arms against a firefly.
If we have but a week of open weather we shall have a good store in our cellar." The work continued steadily for a week. The horses were each day taken to feed at the meadow, the two wood-choppers continued their work, while the rest of the party hunted.
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