FRESCOJBS FROM THE PAST. 23

But you know a young person can't wait very well when lie is impatient
to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such
a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big raft
and crawl aboard and listen—they would talk about Cairo, because they
would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they
would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or something. Jim
had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most always start a good
plan when you wanted one.

I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I eased
up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all right—nobody at
the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was most abreast the

camp fire in the middle,
then I crawled aboard and
inched along and got in
•I SWUM ALONG THE EAST.' """f* some tundles of
shmgles on the weather
side of the fire. There was thirteen men there—they was the watch on deck
of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin
cups, and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing—roaring, you
may say; and it wasn't a nice song—for a parlour anyway. He roared
through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.
When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then,
another was sung. It begun:—
* There was a woman in our towdn,
In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,)
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'l*