Read Online Life on The Mississippi by Mark Twain - Free Book Online Page A

are you?” says another.
    “What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.”
    “Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.”
    I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says:
    “A cussed thief! Lend a hand and le’s heave him overboard!”
    “No,” says Big Bob, “le’s get out the paint pot and paint him a sky blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!”
    “Good! That’s it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.”
    When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he says:
    “ ’Vast there! He’s nothing but a cub. I’ll paint the man that tetches him!”
    So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn’t take it up.
    “Come here to the fire, and le’s see what you’re up to here,” says Davy. “Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you been aboard here?”
    “Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,” says I.
    “How did you get dry so quick?”
    “I don’t know, sir. I’m always that way, mostly.”
    “Oh, you are, are you? What’s your name?”
    I warn’t going to tell my name. I didn’t know what to say, so I just says:
    “Charles William Allbright, sir.”
    Then they roared—the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that, because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.
    When they got done laughing, Davy says:
    “It won’t hardly do, Charles William. You couldn’t have growed this much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar’l, you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody’ll hurt you, if you ain’t up to anything wrong. What is your name?”
    “Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.”
    “Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?”
    “From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him——”
    “Oh, come!”
    “Yes, sir, it’s as true as the world; Pap he says——”
    “Oh, your grandmother!”
    They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and stopped me.
    “Now, looky here,” says Davy; “you’re scared, and so you talk wild. Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?”
    “Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But I warn’t born in her. It’s our first trip.”
    “Now you’re talking! What did you come aboard here for? To steal?”
    “No, sir, I didn’t.—It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys does that.”
    “Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?”
    “Sometimes they drive the boys off.”
    “So they do. They might steal. Looky here; if we let you off this time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?”
    “ ’Deed I will, boss. You try me.”
    “All right, then. You ain’t but little ways from shore. Overboard with you, and don’t you make a fool of yourself another time this way. Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!”
    I didn’t wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore. When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home again.
     
    The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire to offer in this place.
    I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination—the marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has been