32

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

' After dark the off watch didn't turn in ; nobody sung, nobody talked 5
the boys didn't scatter around, neither ; they sort of huddled together, for-
rard ; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking steady in the
one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And then, here cornea
the barl again. She took up her old place. She staid there all night; no-
body turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got awful
dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared

THERE WAS A REG-ULAK. STOJBM.'

and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over
everything in big sheets of glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day;
and the river lashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and
there was that bar'l jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered the
watch to man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go—no
more sprained ankles for them, they said. They wouldn't even walk aft
Well then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning