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.