第 31 页

was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the

river, but I didn't lose no time; and when I struck the raft at last I

was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could

afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sung out:

"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut

of them!"

Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so

full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in

my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King

Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and

lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and

bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the

king and the duke, but I says:

"Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and

let her slide!"

So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it DID seem

so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and

nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack

my heels a few times--I couldn't help it; but about the third crack I

noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and

listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over

the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making

their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.

So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all

I could do to keep from crying.

CHAPTER XXX.

WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar,

and says:

"Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! Tired of our company,

hey?"

I says:

"No, your majesty, we warn't--PLEASE don't, your majesty!"

"Quick, then, and tell us what WAS your idea, or I'll shake the insides

out o' you!"

"Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. The

man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a

boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy

in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by

finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and

whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit out. It

didn't seem no good for ME to stay--I couldn't do nothing, and I didn't

want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I

found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch

me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive

now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we

see you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn't."

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh, yes,

it's MIGHTY likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd

drownd me. But the duke says:

"Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would YOU a done any different? Did you

inquire around for HIM when you got loose? I don't remember it."

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in

it. But the duke says:

"You better a blame' sight give YOURSELF a good cussing, for you're the

one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing from the start

that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that

imaginary blue-arrow mark. That WAS bright--it was right down bully; and

it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that they'd a

jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and then--the

penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the

gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let

go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats

to-night--cravats warranted to WEAR, too--longer than WE'D need 'em."

They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of

absent-minded like:

"Mf! And we reckoned the NIGGERS stole it!"

That made me squirm!

"Yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "WE did."

After about a half a minute the king drawls out:

"Leastways, I did."

The duke says, the same way:

"On the contrary, I did."

The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

"Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?"

The duke says, pretty brisk:

"When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was YOU referring

to?"

"Shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but I don't know--maybe you was

asleep, and didn't know what you was about."

The duke bristles up now, and says:

"Oh, let UP on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool?

Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?"

"YES, sir! I know you DO know, because you done it yourself!"

"It's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. The king sings out:

"Take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!"

The duke says:

"Well, you just own up, first, that you DID hide that money there,

intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it

up, and have it all to yourself."

"Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair;

if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and take

back everything I said."

"You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There, now!"

"Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more--now

DON'T git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide

it?"

The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:

"Well, I don't care if I DID, I didn't DO it, anyway. But you not only

had it in mind to do it, but you DONE it."

"I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say

I warn't goin' to do it, because I WAS; but you--I mean somebody--got in

ahead o' me."

"It's a lie! You done it, and you got to SAY you done it, or--"

The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:

"'Nough!--I OWN UP!"

I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier

than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says:

"If you ever deny it again I'll drown you. It's WELL for you to set

there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've

acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything

--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought

to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot

of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel

ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you,

I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted

to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another,

and scoop it ALL!"

The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:

"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me."

"Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "And

NOW you see what you GOT by it. They've got all their own money back,

and all of OURN but a shekel or two BESIDES. G'long to bed, and don't

you deffersit ME no more deffersits, long 's YOU live!"

So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort,

and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an

hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the

lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. They

both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough

to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That

made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we

had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.

CHAPTER XXXI.

WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down

the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long

ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them,

hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I

ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So

now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work

the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for

them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a

dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo

does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and

pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution;

but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a

solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying,

and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of

everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got

just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along,

thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a

time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in

the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.

Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they

was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over

and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into

somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money

business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an

agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such

actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold

shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid

the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a

shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us

all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if

anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob,

you MEAN," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll

come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft--and

you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he warn't back

by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come

along.

So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and

was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't

seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.

Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and

no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for THE

chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and

hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back

room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers

bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all

his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to

them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun

to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook

the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer,

for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day

before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of

breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:

"Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!"

But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was

gone! I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run

this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no

use--old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it.

But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road,

trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and

asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

"Yes."

"Whereabouts?" says I.

"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway

nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?"

"You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two

ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay

down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard

to come out."

"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.

He run off f'm down South, som'ers."

"It's a good job they got him."

"Well, I RECKON! There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like

picking up money out'n the road."

"Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him

FIRST. Who nailed him?"

"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for

forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think

o' that, now! You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year."

"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no

more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't

straight about it."

"But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It