Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0136/01363.txt

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$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter III}
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$Author{Twain, Mark}
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$Subject{says
bar'l
come
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i'm
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$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter III

Frescos From The Past

     Apparently the river was ready for business, now.  But no; the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate and
time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had been.

     Seventy years elapsed after the exploration before the river's borders
had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before the
river had a commerce.  Between La Salle's opening of the river and the time
when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything like a regular and
active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne of England, America
had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had rotted and
died, the French monarchy had gone down in the red tempest of the Revolution,
and Napoleon was a name that was beginning to be talked about.  Truly, there
were snails in those days.

     The river's earliest commerce was in great barges - keelboats,
broadhorns.  They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New Orleans,
changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back by hand.  A
voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months.  In time this commerce
increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and hardy men; rude,
uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism;
heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties like the
Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every
one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane, prodigal of their money,
bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric finery, prodigious
braggarts; yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and
duty, and often picturesquely magnanimous.

     By and by the steamboat intruded.  Then, for fifteen or twenty years,
these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers did
all of the up-stream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in New
Orleans, and returning home as deck-passengers in the steamers.

     But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in speed that
they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then keelboating died a
permanent death.  The keelboatman became a deckhand, or a mate, or a pilot on
the steamer; and when steamer-berths were not open to him, he took a berth on
a Pittsburg coal-flat, or on a pine raft constructed in the forests up toward
the sources of the Mississippi.

     In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end
was flaked with coal-fleets and timber-rafts, all managed by hand, and
employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to describe.
I remember the annual processions of mighty rafts that used to glide by
Hannibal when I was a boy - an acre or so of white, sweet- smelling boards in
each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or four wigwams scattered
about the raft's vast level space for storm- quarters - and I remember the
rude ways and the tremendous talk of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and
their admiringly patterning successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or a
third of a mile and get on these rafts and have a ride.

     By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now departed
and hardly remembered raft life, I will throw in, in this place, a chapter
from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts, during the past
five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course of five or six more.
The book is a story which details some passages in the life of an ignorant
village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of my time out West, there.
He has run away from his persecuting father, and from a persecuting good widow
who wishes to make a nice, truth- telling, respectable boy of him; and with
him a slave of the widow's has also escaped.  They have found a fragment of a
lumber-raft (it is high water and dead summer-time), and are floating down the
river by night, and hiding in the willows by day - bound for Cairo, whence the
negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free states.  But, in a fog, they
pass Cairo without knowing it.  By and by they begin to suspect the truth, and
Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming down to a huge
raft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them, creeping aboard under
cover of the darkness, and gathering the needed information by eavesdropping:

     But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to
find a thing out.  We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such a
black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big raft and
crawl aboard and listen - they would talk about Cairo, because they would be
calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe; or anyway they would send
boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or something.  Jim had a wonderful
level head, for a nigger: he could most always start a good plan when you
wanted one.

     I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light.  By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I eased
up and went slow and cautious.  But everything was all right - nobody at the
sweeps.  So I swum down along the raft till I was most abreast the camp-fire
in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got in among some
bundles of shingles on the weather side of the fire.  There was thirteen men
there - they was the watch on deck of course.  And a mighty rough-looking lot,
too.  They had a jug, and tin cups, and they kept the jug moving.  One man was
singing - roaring, you may say; and it wasn't a nice song - for a parlor,
anyway.  He roared through his nose, and strung out the last word of every
line very long. When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop,
and then another was sung.  It begun:

     "There was a woman in our towdn,
     In our towdn did dwed'l [dwell],
     She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
     But another man twyste as wed'l.

     "Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,
     Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e,
     She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
     But another man twyste as wed'l."

And so on - fourteen verses.  It was kind of poor, and when he was going to
start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow died on;
and another one said: "Oh, give us a rest!" And another one told him to take a
walk.  They made fun of him till he got mad and jumped up and begun to cuss
the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the lot.

     They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says:

     "Set whar you are, gentlemen.  Leave him to me; he's my meat."

     Then he jumped up in the air three times, and cracked his heels together
every time.  He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes, and
says, "You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done"; and flung his hat down, which
was all over ribbons, and says, "You lay thar tell his sufferin's is over."

     Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again, and
shouted out:

     "Whoo-oop!  I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-
bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!  Look at me!  I'm the man
they call Sudden Death and General Desolation!  Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by
an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on
the mother's side!  Look at me!  I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of
whisky for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes
and a dead body when I'm ailing.  I split the everlasting rocks with my
glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak!  Whoo-oop!  Stand back and
give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails
of the dying is music to my ear. Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!  and lay low
and hold your breath, for I'm 'bout to turn myself loose!"

     All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and looking
fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking up his
wristbands, and now and then straightening up and beating his breast with his
fist, saying, "Look at me, gentlemen!" When he got through, he jumped up and
cracked his heels together three times, and let off a roaring "Whoo-oop!  I'm
the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives!"

     Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down over
his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged and his
south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and drawing in in
front of him, and so went around in a little circle about three times,
swelling himself up and breathing hard.  Then he straightened, and jumped up
and cracked his heels together three times before he lit again (that made them
cheer), and he began to shout like this:

     "Whoo-opp!  bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's a-
coming!  Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! whoo-oop!
I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start!  Smoked glass, here, for all!
Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen!  When I'm playful I
use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag
the Atlantic Ocean for whales!  I scratch my head with the lightning and purr
myself to sleep with the thunder!  When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico
and bathe in it; when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm
thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth
hungry, famine follows in my tracks!  Whoo-oop!  Bow your neck and spread!  I
put my hand on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece
out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the
mountains!  Contemplate me through leather - don't use the naked eye!  I'm the
man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of isolated
communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of
nationalities the serious business of my life!  The boundless vastness of the
great American desert is my inclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own
premises!" He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he
lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out: "Whoo-oop!
bow your neck and spread, for the Pet Child of Calamity's a-coming!"

     Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again - the first
one - the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in again,
bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time, swelling round
and round each other and punching their fists most into each other's faces,
and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names, and the
Child called him names back again; next, Bob called him a heap rougher names,
and the Child come back at him with the very worst kind of language; next, Bob
knocked the Child's hat off, and the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's
ribbony hat about six foot; Bob went and got it and said never mind, this
warn't going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man that never
forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better look out, for there was a
time a-coming, just as sure as he was a living man, that he would have to
answer to him with the best blood in his body.  The Child said no man was
willinger than he for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning,
now, never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded
in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.

     Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a little
black-whiskered chap skipped up and says:

     "Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash
the two of ye!"

     And he done it, too.  He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that,
he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they could get
up.  Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs - and how the other
lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way through, and shout,
"Sail in, Corpse-Maker!" "Hi!  at him again, Child of Calamity!" "Bully for
you, little Davy!" Well, it was a perfect pow-wow for a while.  Bob and the
Child had red noses and black eyes when they got through.  Little Davy made
them own up that they was sneaks and cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or
drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook hands with each other, very
solemn, and said they had always respected each other and was willing to let
bygones be bygones. So then they washed their faces in the river; and just
then there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the after
sweeps.

     I lay still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe
that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they
stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again.
Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played, and another patted juba, and
the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old- fashioned keelboat
breakdown.  They couldn't keep that up very long without getting winded, so by
and by they settled around the jug again.

     They sung "Jolly, Jolly Raftsman's the Life for Me," with a rousing
chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and their
different kind of habits; and next about women and their different ways; and
next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire; and next about what
ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do, and
how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight; and next about what to
do when a man has fits; and next about differences betwixt clear-water rivers
and muddy-water ones.  The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water
was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a
pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to
three- quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the
river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water - what you wanted to do
was to keep it stirred up - and when the river was low, keep mud on hand to
put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.

     The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his
stomach if he wanted to.  He says:

     "You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale.  Trees won't grow worth
shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they grow
upwards of eight hundred foot high.  It's all on account of the water the
people drunk before they laid up.  A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil
any."

     And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi
water.  Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is low,
you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east side of the
Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a quarter
of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of
the way across.  Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from getting
moldy, and from that they went into ghosts and told about a lot that other
folks had seen; but Ed says:

     "Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves?  Now let me
have a say.  Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right along
here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss of the
stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick Allbright, and
he come along to where I was sitting, forrard - gaping and stretching, he was
- and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed his face in the river,
and come and set down by me and got out his pipe, and had just got it filled,
when he looks up and says:

     "'Why looky-here,' he says, 'ain't that Buck Miller's place, over yander
in the bend?"

     "'Yes,' says I, 'it is - why?' He laid his pipe down and leaned his head
on his hand, and says:

     "'I thought we'd be further down.' I says:

     "'I thought it, too, when I went off watch' - we was standing six hours
on and six off - 'but the boys told me,' I says, 'that the raft didn't seem to
hardly move, for the last hour,' says I 'though she's a- slipping along all
right now,' says I.  He give a kind of a groan, and says:

     "'I've seed a raft act so before, along here,' he says, ''pears to me the
current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last two years,'
he says.

     "Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around on
the water.  That started me at it, too.  A body is always doing what he sees
somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it. Pretty soon I see
a black something floating on the water away off to stabboard and quartering
behind us.  I see he was looking at it, too.  I says:

     "'What's that?' He says, sort of pettish:

     "''Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l.'

     "'An empty bar'l!' says I, 'why,' says I, 'a spy-glass is a fool to your
eyes.  How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?' He says:

     "'I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it might be,'
says he.

     "'Yes,' I says, 'so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a
body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that,' I says.

     "We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it.  By and by I
says:

     "'Why, looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I
believe.'

     "He never said nothing.  The thing gained and gained, and I judged it
must be a dog that was about tired out.  Well, we swung down into the
crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the moonshine, and
by George, it was a bar'l.  Says I:

     "'Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, when it was
half a mile off?' says I.  Says he:

     "'I don't know.' Says I:

     "'You tell me, Dick Allbright.' Says he:

     "'Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it;
they says it's a ha'nted bar'l.'

     "I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I
told them what Dick said.  It floated right along abreast, now, and didn't
gain any more.  It was about twenty foot off.  Some was for having it aboard,
but the rest didn't want to.  Dick Allbright said rafts that had fooled with
it had got bad luck by it.  The captain of the watch said he didn't believe in
it.  He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us because it was in a little
better current than what we was.  He said it would leave by and by.

     "So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song, and
then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for another
song; but it was clouding up now, and the bar'l stuck right thar in the same
place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so
they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers, but it sort of dropped
flat, and nobody said anything for a minute.  Then everybody tried to talk at
once, and one chap got off a joke, but it warn't no use, they didn't laugh,
and even the chap that made the joke didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual.
We all just settled down glum, and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy and
oncomfortable.  Well, sir, it shut down black and still, and then the wind
began to moan around, and next the lightning began to play and the thunder to
grumble.  And pretty soon there was a regular storm, and in the middle of it a
man that was running aft stumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he
had to lay up.  This made the boys shake their heads.  And every time the
lightning come, there was that bar'l, with the blue lights winking around it.
We was always on the lookout for it.  But by and by, toward dawn, she was
gone.  When the day come we couldn't see her anywhere, and we warn't sorry,
either.

     "But next night about half past nine, when there was songs and high jinks
going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the stabboard side.
There warn't no more high jinks.  Everybody got solemn; nobody talked; you
couldn't get anybody to do anything but set around moody and look at the
bar'l.  It begun to cloud up again.  When the watch changed, the off watch
stayed up, 'stead of turning in.  The storm ripped and roared around all
night, and in the middle of it another man tripped and sprained his ankle, and
had to knock off.  The bar'l left toward day, and nobody see it go.

     "Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day.  I don't mean the
kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone - not that.  They was quiet,
but they all drunk more than usual - not together, but each man sidled off and
took it private, by himself.

     "After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked; the
boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together, forrard;
and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking steady in the one
direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar'l
again.  She took up her old place.  She stayed there all night; nobody turned
in.  The storm come on again, after midnight.  It got awful dark; the rain
poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind
blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of
glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up
white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar'l
jiggering along, same as ever.  The captain ordered the watch to man the after
sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go - no more sprained ankles for them,
they said.  They wouldn't even walk aft.  Well, then, just then the sky split
wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of the after watch,
and crippled two more.  Crippled them how, say you?  Why, sprained their
ankles!

     "The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, toward dawn.  Well, not a
body eat a bite at breakfast that morning.  After that the men loafed around,
in twos and threes, and talked low together.  But none of them herded with
Dick Allbright.  They all give him the cold shake.  If he come around where
any of the men was, they split up and sidled away. They wouldn't man the
sweeps with him.  The captain had all the skiffs hauled up on the raft,
alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the dead men be took ashore to be
planted; he didn't believe a man that got ashore would come back; and he was
right.

     "After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be
trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on.  A good
many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on other
trips, and that had an ugly look.  Some wanted to put him ashore.  Some said:
'Let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.'

     "This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched together
forrard watching for the bar'l, when lo and behold you!  here she comes again.
Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her old tracks.  You could
'a' heard a pin drop.  Then up comes the captain, and says:

     "'Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'l to
be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and you don't: Well, then, how's the
best way to stop it?  Burn it up - that's the way.  I'm going to fetch it
abroad,' he says.  And before anybody could say a word, in he went.

     "He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to
one side.  But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and there was
a baby in it!  Yes, sir; a stark-naked baby.  It was Dick Allbright's baby; he
owned up and said so.

     "'Yes,' he says, a-leaning over it, 'yes, it is my own lamented darling,
my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,' says he - for he could curl
his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to,
and lay them before you without a jint started anywheres.  Yes, he said, he
used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child,
which was crying, not intending to kill it - which was prob'ly a lie - and
then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l, before his wife got home, and
off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was
the third year that the bar'l had chased him.  He said the bad luck always
begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't
come any more after that.  He said if the men would stand it one more night -
and was a-going on like that - but the men had got enough.  They started to
get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little
child all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it, hugged up to his breast
and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old
suffering soul, nor Charles William neither."

     "Who was shedding tears?" says Bob; "was it Allbright or the baby?"

     "Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead? Been
dead three years - how could it cry?"

     "Well, never mind how it could cry - how could it keep all that time?"
says Davy.  "You answer me that."

     "I don't know how it done it," says Ed.  "It done it, though - that's all
I know about it."

     "Say - what did they do with the bar'l?" says the Child of Calamity.

     "Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead."

     "Edward, did the child look like it was choked?" says one.

     "Did it have its hair parted?" says another.

     "What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?" says a fellow they called Bill.

     "Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?" says Jimmy.

     "Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning?"
says Davy.

     "Him?  Oh, no!  he was both of 'em," says Bob.  Then they all haw-hawed.

     "Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill?  You look bad -
don't you feel pale?" says the Child of Calamity.

     "Oh, come, now, Eddy," says Jimmy, "show up; you must 'a' kept part of
that bar'l to prove the thing by.  Show us the bung-hole - do - and we'll all
believe you."

     "Say, boys," says Bill, "less divide it up.  Thar's thirteen of us. I can
swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest."

     Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped
out pretty savage, and then walked off aft, cussing to himself, and they
yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear them a
mile.

     "Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that," says the Child of Calamity; and
he came rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles where I was,
and put his hand on me.  I was warm and soft and naked; so he says "Ouch!" and
jumped back.

     "Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys - there's a snake here as
big as a cow!"

     So they run there with a lantern, and crowded up and looked in on me.

     "Come out of that, you beggar!" says one.

     "Who are you?" says another.

     "What are you after here?  Speak up prompt, or overboard you go."

     "Snake him out, boys.  Snatch him out by the heels."

     I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling.  They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says:

     "A cussed thief!  Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!"

     "No," says Big Bob, "less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky-blue
all over from head to heel, and then heave him over."

     "Good!  that's it.  Go for the paint, Jimmy."

     When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,
the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sort of
worked on Davy, and he says:

     "Vast there.  He's nothing but a cub.  I'll paint the man that teches
him!"

     So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and
Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.

     "Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here," says Davy.
"Now set down there and give an account of yourself.  How long have you been
aboard here?"

     "Not over a quarter of a minute, sir," says I.

     "How did you get dry so quick?"

     "I don't know, sir.  I'm always that way, mostly."

     "Oh, you are, are you?  What's your name?"

     I warn't going to tell my name.  I didn't know what to say, so I just
says:

     "Charles William Allbright, sir."

     Then they roared - the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,
because, maybe, laughing would get them in a better humor.

     When they got done laughing, Davy says:

     "It won't hardly do, Charles William.  You couldn't have growed this much
in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l, you know, and
dead at that.  Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody'll hurt you, if
you ain't up to anything wrong.  What is your name?"

     "Aleck Hopkins, sir.  Aleck James Hopkins."

     "Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?"

     "From a trading-scow.  She lays up the bend yonder.  I was born on her.
Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off here,
because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you to speak to
a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him - "

     "Oh, come!"

     "Yes, sir, it's as true as the world.  Pap he says - "

     "Oh, your grandmother!"

     They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and
stopped me.

     "Now, looky-here," says Davy; "you're scared, and so you talk wild.
Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?"

     "Yes, sir, in a trading-scow.  She lays up at the head of the bend. But I
warn't born in her.  It's our first trip."

     "Now you're talking!  What did you come aboard here for?  To steal?"

     "No, sir, I didn't.  It was only to get a ride on the raft.  All boys
does that."

     "Well, I know that.  But what did you hide for?"

     "Sometimes they drive the boys off."

     "So they do.  They might steal.  Looky-here; if we let you off this time,
will you keep out of these kind of scrapes here after?"

     "'Deed I will, boss.  You try me."

     "All right, then.  You ain't but little ways from shore.  Overboard with
you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way. Blast it,
boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!"

     I didn't wait to kiss good-by, but went overboard and broke for shore.
When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around the
point.  I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home again.

     The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has
furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire
to offer in this place.

     I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times of
steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination - the marvelous
science of piloting, as displayed there.  I believe there has been nothing
like it elsewhere in the world.