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"Ah, mees," says the Guatemalan deprecatingly, as he stops before us, "I did sit one meeserable quarter-hour by the rail with two life presairvairs and try to raimember one Ave Maria." Acting on Mrs. Steele's wise suggestion, I keep the Peruvian at bay as much as possible; but this is not so easy as it might seem, and my best safeguard is to stay with Mrs.
"And you you would pass rather a sad quarter-hour with the Red Duke," replied Aramis. "Oh, the Red Duke! Bravo! Bravo! The Red Duke!" cried Porthos, clapping his hands and nodding his head. "The Red Duke is capital. I'll circulate that saying, be assured, my dear fellow. Who says this Aramis is not a wit?
The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat, the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near and far. . . . The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo steadying the canoe a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of joy from the lips of the waif-a cry that pierced the storm and brought back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore. . . The quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water. . . . Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven nearer and nearer shore.... The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round clinging-clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue. . . . At last a rope thrown, a drowning man's wrists wound round it, his teeth set in it and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being carried to the mikonaree's but and laid upon two beds, one on either side of the small room, as the red sun goes slowly down. . . . The two still bodies on bearskins in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians flying from the face of death. . . . The two alone in the light of the flickering fire; the many gone to feast on fish, the price of lives.
In the last quarter-hour aboard, when every one was on the lower deck about the forward gangway, Hilary and Anna, having chanced to step up upon a coil of rope, found it easier, in the unconscious press, to stay there than to move on, and in keeping with his long habit as a leader he fell into a lively talk with those nearest him, Sam and Charlie close in front, Bartleson and Mandeville just at his back, to lighten the general heaviness.
A further notion extended to whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service of illustrating Gospel truths.
But for the moment it was good just to be free, to feel the soft winds of summer lick his skin, to walk slowly under the sun, carrying the little bundle of things which belonged to the stranger, with a knife once more at his belt and friends about him. But within the quarter-hour their peace was broken.
We fell to with a vengeance and at the end of a quarter-hour hardly a crumb remained. "When you've finished, come upstairs; Madame will take the first door to the right. You boys come up a flight higher," called a voice from above. We obeyed, and before retiring I waited a good half-hour hoping our friend would reappear.
It was Chrome's idea, as he frankly said, to keep moving southwestward until Tintop's scouts should see the huge column of dust, and send forth to meet and guide him with his prizes to the colonel's camp. Every quarter-hour, therefore, was taking him farther and father away from his corralled comrades down-stream, but he refused to see it.
There is a lusty old shagbark in Wetzel's Swamp that has given me many a pleasant quarter-hour, as I have stood at attention before its symmetrical stem, hung with slabs of brown bark that seem always just ready to separate from the trunk.
"There's only one thing to it, old man," he said. "We must dive through that tunnel." "Through that hole?" gasped Ashton. "No! I've done enough. I shall stay here." "To drown like a rat in a rainwater barrel!" rejoined Blake. "Look at that watermark. The tunnel is now running full. Inside a quarter-hour the river will be up over this ledge.
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