The fare provided by the company for its steamboat crew was exceedingly plain and scanty. The men got very tired of it, and as they were much delayed by low water in getting into the buffalo country, La Barge told them that the first buffalo they came in sight of they should have, even if he had to lie to half a day to get it. La Barge had as first mate an excellent man, John Durack, who had served in the English navy, and had made his way to New Orleans and thence to St. Louis. He had been on the river before, but had never been engaged in a buffalo hunt, and the Captain thought this a good opportunity to initiate him. When the boat reached the vicinity of Handy’s post four buffalo bulls were seen swimming the river. “Man the yawl, John,” said La Barge. “I will go with you and we will have a buffalo before we get back.” The Captain gave orders to the men on the boat to shoot the buffaloes, and he would then lasso one of the wounded ones and drag it to the boat. He put Durack in the bow with a line while he took the rudder. The men on the steamboat fired and wounded two of the buffaloes. To get to the wounded ones the boat had to pass close to the two uninjured ones. The Captain supposed that Durack fully understood the programme, but the mate was not “up to buffalo,” and to La Barge’s consternation slipped the noose over the head of one of the uninjured animals. Too late Captain La Barge shouted to him not to do this--that he did not want to anchor to a live buffalo. “Oh,” replied Durack, “he’s as good as any.” The buffalo kept straight on his course. The men backed their oars, but to no purpose; they could not stop him. Finally his feet touched bottom and up the bank he went with the boat and its helpless crew after him. They might indeed have taken a boat ride over the bare prairie had not the stem of the yawl given way, being wrenched entirely out of the boat and carried off by the terrified animal. There stood the sorry crew, shipwrecked on a sandbar across the river from the steamboat--and with no buffalo. A whole day was consumed in getting back to the boat and in repairing the broken yawl. Meanwhile the crew kept on eating salt pork and navy bread. [Sidenote: A TERRIBLE STORM.] On the 23d of June, when the _Nimrod_ was a little below the site of the Aricara villages, near the mouth of Grand River, there arose one of those frightful tempests of wind, hail, and rain which were so frequent on the central prairies. For a little while the safety of the boat was despaired of. All the glass on the windward side was broken and the interior of the boat deluged with rain and hail. The hail accumulated in the cabin to the depth of a foot, and some of the hailstones were as large as turkey eggs. Captain La Barge made clay impressions of some of them and sent them to the St. Louis _Republican_ as curiosities deserving public notice. Besides the damage to the cabins the wind carried away the pilot-house, which had to be replaced with a skin roof.