I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below
there and out in the middle of the Mississippi.
Then we hung up our signal lantern, and judged that
we was free and safe once more. I hadn’t
had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out
some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage
and greens—there ain’t nothing in
the world so good when it’s cooked right—and
whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time.
I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and
so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said
there warn’t no home like a raft, after all.
Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but
a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and
easy and comfortable on a raft.
CHAPTER XIX.
Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon
I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet
and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put
in the time. It was a monstrous big river down
there—sometimes a mile and a half wide;
we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as
night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied
up—nearly always in the dead water under
a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows,
and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the
lines. Next we slid into the river and had a
swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set
down on the sandy bottom where the water was about
knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not
a sound anywheres—perfectly still —just
like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the
bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing
to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of
dull line—that was the woods on t’other
side; you couldn’t make nothing else out; then
a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading
around; then the river softened up away off, and warn’t
black any more, but gray; you could see little dark
spots drifting along ever so far away—trading
scows, and such things; and long black streaks —rafts;
sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled
up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far;
and by and by you could see a streak on the water
which you know by the look of the streak that there’s
a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it
and makes that streak look that way; and you see the
mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens
up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in
the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other
side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled
by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres;
then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning
you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to
smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but
sometimes not that way, because they’ve left
dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do
get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full
day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds
just going it!
Copyrights
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.