“Well, my idea is this: we’ll rustle
around and gather up whatever pickins we’ve
overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and
hide the truck. Then we’ll wait.
Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n
two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes
off down the river. See? He’ll be
drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for
it but his own self. I reckon that’s a
considerble sight better ‘n killin’ of
him. I’m unfavorable to killin’
a man as long as you can git aroun’ it; it ain’t
good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t
I right?”
“Yes, I reck’n you are. But s’pose
she don’t break up and wash off?”
“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and
see, can’t we?”
“All right, then; come along.”
So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat,
and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there;
but I said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “Jim
!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with
a sort of a moan, and I says:
“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling
around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers
in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat
and set her drifting down the river so these fellows
can’t get away from the wreck there’s
one of ’em going to be in a bad fix. But
if we find their boat we can put all of ’em
in a bad fix—for the sheriff ’ll get
’em. Quick—hurry! I’ll
hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard.
You start at the raft, and—”
“Oh, my lordy, lordy! Raf’?
Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done
broke loose en gone I—en here we is!”
Well, I catched my breath and most fainted.
Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that!
But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering.
We’d got to find that boat now—had
to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking
and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work
it was, too—seemed a week before we got
to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said
he didn’t believe he could go any further—so
scared he hadn’t hardly any strength left, he
said. But I said, come on, if we get left on
this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled
again. We struck for the stern of the texas,
and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on
the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter,
for the edge of the skylight was in the water.
When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there
was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely
see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another
second I would a been aboard of her, but just then
the door opened. One of the men stuck his head
out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought
I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:
“Heave that blame lantern out o’ sight,
Bill!”
He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then
got in himself and set down. It was Packard.
Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard
says, in a low voice:
