COMPLETING MY EDUCATION.

103

profanity, one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing frag-
ments of a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness would shut
again. And that flatboatman would be sure to go into New Orleans

* GAMBLING DOWN
BELOW.'

and sue our boat,
swearing stoutly that
he had a light burning all the
time, when in truth his gang
had the lantern down below
to sing and lie and drink and
gamble by, and no watch on
deck. Once, at night, in one of
those forest-bordered crevices
(behind an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe with the
phrase * as dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a
Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened
to be fiddling down below, and we just caught the sound of the music