"The deuce!" interrupted the pilot, again dropping his glass.
The Judge glared angrily; the passengers saw, across the shortened distance, one of the Chums holding by a root to the bank, and trying to support the other, whose shirt hung in rags, and who seemed exhausted.
"Which one's hurt?" asked the captain. "Give me the glass."
But the pilot had left the house and taken the glass with him.
"I saw the whole transaction through the window. I was so close that I saw the sheriff's assailant's very eyes. I'd know that fellow's face if I saw it in Africa."
"Why, they're _both_ hurt!" exclaimed the captain. "They've thrown a coat over one, and they're crowdin' around the other. What the--They're comin' back without 'em--need whisky to bring 'em to, I suppose. Why didn't I send whisky down by the other boat? There's an awful amount of time being wasted here. What's the matter, Mr. Bell?" shouted the captain, as the boat approached the steamer.
"Both? Now, ladies and gentlemen," exclaimed the captain, turning toward the passengers, who were crowded forward just below him, "I want to know if that isn't a streak of the meanest kind of luck? Both the Chums gone! Why, I won't be able to hold up my head in New Orleans. How came it that just those two fellows were knocked out?"
"Red tumbled out, and Black jumped in after him," replied the officer. "Red must have been caught in an eddy and tangled in the old tree's roots--clothes torn almost off--head caved in. Black must have burst a blood-vessel--his face looked like a copper pan when he reached shore, and he just groaned and dropped."
The captain was sorry, so sorry that he sent a waiter for brandy. But the captain was human--business was business--the rain was falling, and a big log was across the boat's bow; so he shouted:
"Hurry up and bury 'em, then. You ought to have let the second boat's crew gone on with that, and you have gone back to your soundings. They _was_ the Chums, to be sure, but now they're only dead roustabouts. Below there! Pass out a couple of shovels!"
"Perhaps some ladies would go down with the boat, captain--and a preacher, too, if there's one aboard," remarked the mate, with an earnest but very mysterious expression.