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- 6897
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6801
- text
-
He bowed over his venerable head, and--as I live--something like a
shower-drop somehow fell from my face into the shallows.
‘Tip!’
We tipped.
‘A little more!’
We tipped a little more.
‘A _leetle_ more!’
We tipped a _leetle_ more.
‘Just a _leetle_, very _leetle_ bit more.’
With great difficulty we tipped just a _leetle_, very _leetle_ more.
All this time my uncle was diligently stooping over, and striving to
peep in, up, and under the box where the coiled anacondas and adders
lay; but the machine being now fairly immersed, the attempt was wholly
vain.
He rose erect, and waded slowly all round the box; his countenance firm
and reliant, but not a little troubled and vexed.
It was plain something or other was going wrong. But as I was left in
utter ignorance as to the mystery of the contrivance, I could not tell
where the difficulty lay, or what was the proper remedy.
Once more, still more slowly, still more vexedly, my uncle waded round
the box, the dissatisfaction gradually deepening, but still controlled,
and still with hope at the bottom of it.
Nothing could be more sure than that some anticipated effect had, as
yet, failed to develop itself. Certain I was, too, that the water-line
did not lower about my legs.
‘Tip it a _leetle_ bit--very _leetle_ now.’
‘Dear uncle, it is tipped already as far as it can be. Don’t you see it
rests now square on its bottom?’
‘You, Yorpy, take your black hoof from under the box!’
This gust of passion on the part of my uncle made the matter seem still
more dubious and dark. It was a bad symptom, I thought.
‘Surely you _can_ tip it just a _leetle_ more!’
‘Not a hair, uncle.’
‘Blast and blister the cursed box, then!’ roared my uncle, in a terrific
voice, sudden as a squall. Running at the box he dashed his bare foot
into it, and with astonishing power all but crushed in the side. Then
seizing the whole box, he disembowelled it of all its anacondas and
adders, and, tearing and wrenching them, flung them right and left over
the water.
‘Hold, hold, my dear, dear uncle!--do for Heaven’s sake desist. Don’t
destroy so, in one frantic moment, all your long, calm years of devotion
to one darling scheme. Hold, I conjure!’
Moved by my vehement voice and uncontrollable tears, he paused in his
work of destruction, and stood steadfastly eyeing me, or rather blankly
staring at me, like one demented.
‘It is not yet wholly ruined, dear uncle; come put it together now. You
have hammer and wrench; put it together again, and try it once more.
While there is life there is hope.’
‘While there is life hereafter there is _despair_,’ he howled.
‘Do, do now, dear uncle--here, here, put these pieces together; or, if
that can’t be done without more tools, try a _section_ of it--that will
do just as well. Try it once; try, uncle.’
My persistent persuasiveness told upon him. The stubborn stump of hope,
ploughed at and uprooted in vain, put forth one last miraculous green
sprout.
Steadily and carefully culling out of the wreck some of the more
curious-looking fragments, he mysteriously involved them together, and
then, clearing out the box, slowly inserted them there, and ranging
Yorpy and me as before, bade us tip the box once again.
We did so; and as no perceptible effect yet followed, I was each moment
looking for the previous command to tip the box over yet more, when,
glancing into my uncle’s face, I started aghast. It seemed pinched,
shrivelled into mouldy whiteness, like a mildewed grape. I dropped the
box, and sprang toward him just in time to prevent his fall.
Leaving the woeful box where we had dropped it, Yorpy and I helped the
old man into the skiff, and silently pulled from Quash Isle.
- title
- Chunk 4