第16章

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water.I listened.Pretty soon I made it out.It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night.I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was -- a skiff, away across the water.I couldn't tell how many was in it.It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it.Think's I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't expecting him.He dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him.Well, it WAS pap, sure enough -- and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.

I didn't lose no time.The next minute I was aspinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank.I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me.I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float.I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it.The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing.I heard what they said, too -- every word of it.One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now.T'other one said THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned -- and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone.The first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old woman -- she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time.I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer.After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.

I was away below the ferry now.I rose up, and there was Jackson's Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights.There warn't any signs of the bar at the head -- it was all under water now.

It didn't take me long to get there.I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside.

I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling.A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it.I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!" I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side.

There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast.