Here for the first time the results of their quarrel arose to embarrass them; they could find no pilot who would risk his life in a craft so badly put together as theirs.  After repeated discouragements the partners took counsel with each other; reluctantly they agreed that they were up against it.

“Seems like I’ve about ruined us,” Mr. Quirk acknowledged, ruefully.

“You?  Why, Jerry, it was my fault we cut the old ship in two,” Mr. Linton declared.

The former speaker remonstrated, gently.  “Now, Tom, it’s just like you to take the blame, but it was my doin’s; I instigated that fratricidal strife.”

Sweetly but firmly Linton differed with his partner.  “It ain’t often that you’re wrong, Jerry, old boy—­it ain’t more than once or twice in a lifetime—­but you’re wrong now.  I’m the guilty wretch and I’d ought to hang for it.  My rotten temper—­”

“Pshaw!  You got one of the nicest dispositions I ever see—­in a man.  You’re sweeter ’n a persimmon.  I pecked at you till your core was exposed.  I’m a thorn in the flesh, Tom, and folks wouldn’t criticize you none for doin’ away with me.”

“You’re ’way off.  I climbed you with my spurs—­”

“Now, Tom!” Sadly Mr. Quirk wagged his gray head.  “I don’t often argue with anybody, especially with you, but the damnable idea of dividin’ our spoils originated in my evil mind and I’m goin’ to pay the penalty.  I’ll ride this white-pine outlaw through by myself.  You ear him down till I get both feet in the stirrups, then turn him a-loose; I’ll finish settin’ up and I won’t pull leather.”

“How you talk!  Boats ain’t like horses; it’ll take a good oarsman to navigate these rapids—­”

“Well?” Quirk looked up quickly.  “I’m a good oarsman.”  There was a momentary pause.  “Ain’t I?”

Mr. Linton hastily remedied his slip of the tongue.  “You’re a bear!” he asserted, with feeling.  “I don’t know as I ever saw a better boatman than you, for your weight and experience, but—­ there’s a few things about boats that you never had the chance to pick up, you being sort of a cactus and alkali sailor.  For instance, when you want a boat to go ‘gee’ you have to pull on the ‘off’ oar.  It’s plumb opposite to the way you steer a horse.”

“Sure!  Didn’t I figger that out for the both of us?  We ’most had a runaway till I doped it out.”

Now this was a plain perversion of fact, for it was Tom who had made the discovery.  Mr. Linton was about to so state the matter when he reflected that doubtless Jerry’s intentions were honest and that his failing memory was to blame for the misstatement.  It was annoying to be robbed of the credit for an important discovery, of course, but Tom swallowed his resentment.

“The point is this,” he said, with a resumption of geniality.  “You’d get all wet in them rapids, Jerry, and—­you know what that means.  I’d rather take a chance on drowning myself than to nurse you through another bad cold.”