We slept most all day, and started out at night,
a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was
as long going by as a procession. She had four
long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as
many as thirty men, likely. She had five big
wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire
in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.
There was a power of style about her. It amounted
to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that.
We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night
clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide,
and was walled with solid timber on both sides; you
couldn’t see a break in it hardly ever, or a
light. We talked about Cairo, and wondered whether
we would know it when we got to it. I said likely
we wouldn’t, because I had heard say there warn’t
but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn’t
happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know
we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big
rivers joined together there, that would show.
But I said maybe we might think we was passing the
foot of an island and coming into the same old river
again. That disturbed Jim—and me too.
So the question was, what to do? I said, paddle
ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them
pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and
was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know
how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was
a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.
There warn’t nothing to do now but to look out
sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing
it. He said he’d be mighty sure to see
it, because he’d be a free man the minute he
seen it, but if he missed it he’d be in a slave
country again and no more show for freedom. Every
little while he jumps up and says:
“Dah she is?”
But it warn’t. It was Jack-o’-lanterns,
or lightning bugs; so he set down again, and went
to watching, same as before. Jim said it made
him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to
freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all
over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because
I begun to get it through my head that he was
most free—and who was to blame for it?
Why, me. I couldn’t get that out
of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to
troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t
stay still in one place. It hadn’t ever
come home to me before, what this thing was that I
was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with
me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to
make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because
I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner;
but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says,
every time, “But you knowed he was running for
his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told
somebody.” That was so—I couldn’t
get around that noway. That was where it pinched.
Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson
done to you that you could see her nigger go off right
under your eyes and never say one single word?
What did that poor old woman do to you that you could
treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you
your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she
tried to be good to you every way she knowed how.
That’s what she done.”
