30

LIFJE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

to hardly move, for the last hour," says J, " though she's a slipping along
all right, now," says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says—

'" I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, " 'pears to me the
current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last two years/'
he says.

' Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around
on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is always doing what
he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it. Pretty
soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to stabboard

and quartering behind us.
I see he was looking at it,
too. I says—

'"What's that?" He
says, sort of pettish,—

'"Tain't nothing but
an old empty bar'l."

'" An empty bar'l! "
says I, "why," says I, "a
spy-glass is a fool to your
eyes. How can you tell
it's an empty bar'l ? " He
says—

f" I don't know ; I
reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I
thought it might be," says
he.

'"Yes," I says, "so it
might be, and it might be
anything else, too; a body
can't tell nothing about it,
such a distance as that," I
says.

' We hadn't nothing
else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and by I says—

'"Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I
believe."

'He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I judged it
must "be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the
crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the moonshine,
and, by George, it was a bar!. Says I—

*a Dick Allbright, what made you thirifr that thing was a barl, when it
was a half a mile off? " says L Says he—

THE MYSTEBIOUS BAEBEL.