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- 8304
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.153Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8228
- text
- that they would load themselves down with one potato too many.
Gasping as I was with my own hamper, I could not, for the life of me,
help laughing at Long Ghost. There he went:—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.
After making these fellows load their baskets together, the Yankee
filled his own, and then drove them before him down to the beach.
Probably he had seen the herds of panniered mules driven in this way by
mounted Indians along the great Callao to Lima. The boat at last
loaded, the Yankee, taking with him a couple of natives, at once
hoisted sail, and stood across the channel for Papeetee.
The next morning at breakfast, old Tonoi ran in, and told us that the
voyagers were returning. We hurried down to the beach, and saw the boat
gliding toward us, with a dozing islander at the helm, and Zeke
standing up in the bows, jingling a small bag of silver, the proceeds
of his cargo.
- title
- Chunk 2