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 whiskey 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 amongst 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 lame 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 small-pox on the mother’s side!