Nobody said anything much; we just sat around the edge of the deck with our staffs and pushed her off, whenever she ran against the shore.
Charlie Seabury sat next to me and after a while he said, "Who's going to tell his people ?" "I am," I told him, "because I'm to blame for the whole business." "Nobody's to blame," he said.
"Yes, I am," I said, "they just did it on account of me." "That's because all the fellows like you," he said, "and they like to do anything for you." Anyway, it wasn't so necessary, I see that now, and it's just the same as if I killed him.

Gee, I wish it was I that got killed, I know that.
Cracky, I deserved to after being such a fool.
After that, nobody spoke for a long time, then Hunt Ward, who's in the Elk Patrol, said, "It's the first fellow in our troop that died.

I guess we won't go up to camp now." "Not in this boat, anyway," I said.
Then after a while I said, "We'll send his name in and they'll print it in Boys' Life." "I know," Hunt said, "with a black line around it." Yet we kind of kept hoping all the time, even though we knew there wasn't any sense in it.

"You thought you were a goner," Hunt said, "and you came back all right." Now I was a big fool that it didn't put a certain idea in my head when he said that, but I only said, "Yes, but that was different." Then Dorry Benton, who was two or three fellows away from me, said, "One thing is sure, he went through the window and into the water.
Maybe he was half conscious and didn't remember there was only a narrow strip of deck there.

And he must have tumbled right off it." "I don't know," I said, "only if he isn't in the boat then he must be in the water and if he fell in the water and couldn't swim or shout either, then he must be drowned." Then nobody said anything and we just sat there keeping her off shore and watching her drift up.