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 leant
his head on his hand, and says–
‘ “I thought we’d be furder 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 bar’l. Says I–
‘ “Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar’l,
when it was a half a mile off,” says I. Says he–
‘ “I don’t know.” Says I–
‘ “You tell me, Dick Allbright.” He says–
‘ “Well, I knowed it was a bar’l; I’ve seen it before; lots has seen it;
they says it’s a haunted 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