Edward S. Ellis

“ The exertion of keeping their charge afloat, and breasting the current at the same time, carried them a considerable distance downstream, and they landed perhaps an eighth of a mile below where the main body of shivering wretches were congregated.
'Do yees feel aisy?' inquired Mickey, when the hunter had been laid upon the grass, beneath some overhanging bushes.
'Yes—I'll soon git over it—but woofh! that thar war a whack of the biggest kind I got. It has made me powerful weak.'
'What might it have been naow!' inquired Hopkins. ”

“ On board the steamer he first met Ethan Hopkins and Mickey McSquizzle, who had spent ten years in California, in a vain hunt for gold, and were now returning to their homes, thoroughly disgusted with the country, its inhabitants and mineral resources. ”

“ As for the Irishman, his situation for the time was exceedingly critical. The man who had clutched his foot did so with the grasp of a drowning man; in their struggle both went to the bottom of the river together. Here, by a furious effort, Mickey shook him free, and coming to the surface, struck out again for the suffering hunter.
'It is sorry I am that I was compelled to leave yees behind,' he muttered, glancing over his shoulder in search of the poor fellow from whom be had just freed himself ”