I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and
there was Jackson’s Island, about two mile and
a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up
out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid,
like a steamboat without any lights. There warn’t
any signs of the bar at the head—it was
all under water now.
It didn’t take me long to get there. I
shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current
was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and
landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.
I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that
I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches
to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen
the canoe from the outside.
I went up and set down on a log at the head of the
island, and looked out on the big river and the black
driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away,
where there was three or four lights twinkling.
A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream,
coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of
it. I watched it come creeping down, and when
it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man
say, “Stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!”
I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my
side.
There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped
into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast.
The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged
it was after eight o’clock. I laid there
in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things,
and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied.
I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but
mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there
amongst them. There was freckled places on the
ground where the light sifted down through the leaves,
and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing
there was a little breeze up there. A couple
of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very
friendly.
I was powerful lazy and comfortable—didn’t
want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was
dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep sound
of “boom!” away up the river. I rouses
up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon
I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and
looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch
of smoke laying on the water a long ways up—about
abreast the ferry. And there was the ferryboat
full of people floating along down. I knowed
what was the matter now. “Boom!”
I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat’s
side. You see, they was firing cannon over the
water, trying to make my carcass come to the top.
