ame 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.

'Can't say, fust thing I know'd, I didn't know nothin', remember suthin'
took me back the head, and the next thing I kerwholloped in the
water.'

The three men had lost everything except what was on their bodies when
the catastrophe occurred. Their horses were gone, and they hadn't a
gun between them; nothing but two revolvers, and about a half dozen
charges for each.

Of the twenty odd who were upon the steamer at the time of the
explosion, nearly one-half were killed; they sinking to the bottom
almost as suddenly as the wrecked steamer, of which not a single trace
now remained.

The survivors made their way to land, reaching it a short distance
below their starting-point, and here they assembled, to commiserate
with each other upon their hapless lot and determine how they were to
reach home.

Our three friends had remained upon shore about half an hour, the two
waiting for the third to recover, when the latter raised himself upon
his elbow in the attitude of listening. At the same time he waved his
hand for the others to hold their peace.

A moment later he said:

'I
hear Injins.''

'Begorrah! where bees the same?' demanded Mickey, starting to his
feet, while Ethan gazed alarmedly about.

'Jist take a squint up the river, and tell me ef they ain't pitchin'
into the poor critters thar.'

Through the sheltering trees and undergrowth, which partly protected
them, the two men gazed up-stream. To their horror, they saw fully
fifty Indians massacring the survivors of the wreck, whooping,
screeching and yelling like demons, while their poor victims were
vainly endeavoring to escape them.

'Begorrah, now, but that looks bad!' exclaimed the Irishman. 'Be the
same towken, what is it that we can do?'

'Jerusalem! They'll be sure to pay us a visit. I'll be gumtued if they
won't,' added the Yankee, in some trepidation, as he cowered down
again by the side of the hunter, and said to him in a lower Voice:

'The worst of it is, we haven't got a gun atwixt us.