CHAPTER XIII
WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up
on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it warn't
no time to be sentimentering. We'd got to find that
boat now -- had to have it for ourselves. So we went
a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and
slow work it was, too -- seemed a week before we got
to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't
believe he could go any further -- so scared he
hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. But I
said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are
in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck
for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then
scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on
from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the
skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close
to the cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure
enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so
thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of
her, but just then the door opened. One of the men
stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from
me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in
again, and says:
"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!"
He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then
got in himself and set down. It was Packard. Then
Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low
voice:
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"All ready -- shove off!"
I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so
weak. But Bill says:
"Hold on -- 'd you go through him?"
"No. Didn't you?"
"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet."
"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and
leave money."
"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?"
"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come
along."
So they got out and went in.
The door slammed to because it was on the careened
side; and in a half second I was in the boat, and
Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and
cut the rope, and away we went!
We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor
whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding
swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the
paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or
two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and
the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her,
and we was safe, and knowed it.
When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream
we see the lantern show like a little spark at the
texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that
the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning
to understand that they was in just as much trouble
now as Jim Turner was.
Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our
raft. Now was the first time that I begun to worry
about the men -- I reckon I hadn't had time to
before. I begun to think how dreadful it was,
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even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to
myself, there ain't no telling but I might come to
be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like
it? So says I to Jim:
"The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards
below it or above it, in a place where it's a good
hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then I'll go
and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to
go for that gang and get them out of their scrape,
so they can be hung when their time comes."
But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it
begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever.
The rain poured down, and never a light showed;
everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the
river, watching for lights and watching for our
raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the
clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead,
floating, and we made for it.
It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get
aboard of it again. We seen a light now away down to
the right, on shore. So I said I would go for it.
The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang
had stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to
the raft in a pile, and I told Jim to float along
down, and show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I come;
then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I
got down towards it three or four more showed -- up
on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above
the shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. As
I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the
jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed
around for the watchman,
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a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by I
found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his
head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two
or three little shoves, and begun to cry.
He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when
he see it was only me he took a good gap and
stretch, and then he says:
" Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the
trouble?"
I says:
"Pap, and mam, and sis, and -- "
Then I broke down. He says:
"Oh, dang it now, don't take on so; we all has to
have our troubles, and this 'n 'll come out all
right. What's the matter with 'em?"
"They're -- they're -- are you the watchman of the
boat?"
"Yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like.
"I'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the
pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and sometimes
I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as
old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous
and good to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and
slam around money the way he does; but I've told him
a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him;
for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and
I'm derned if I'd live two mile out o' town, where
there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his
spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I --
"
I broke in and says:
"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and -- "
"Who is?"
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"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if
you'd take your ferryboat and go up there -- "
"Up where? Where are they?"
" On the wreck."
"What wreck?"
"Why, there ain't but one."
"What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?"
"Yes."
"Good land! what are they doin' there, for gracious
sakes?"
"Well, they didn't go there a-purpose."
"I bet they didn't! Why, great goodness, there ain't
no chance for 'em if they don't git off mighty
quick! Why, how in the nation did they ever git into
such a scrape?"
"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to
the town -- "
"Yes, Booth's Landing -- go on."
"She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and
just in the edge of the evening she started over
with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay all
night at her friend's house, Miss
What-you-may-call-her &mdash disremember her name --
and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around
and went a-floating down, stern first, about two
mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the
ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all
lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard
the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come
along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark
we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it;
and so we saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved
but Bill Whipple -- and oh, he was the best cretur !
-- I most wish 't it had been me, I do."
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"My George! It's the beatenest thing I ever struck.
And then what did you all do?"
"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide
there we couldn't make nobody hear. So pap said
somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I
was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash
for it, and Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike
help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and
he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a mile
below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to
get people to do something, but they said, 'What, in
such a night and such a current? There ain't no
sense in it; go for the steam ferry.' Now if you'll
go and -- "
"By Jackson, I'd like to, and, blame it, I don't
know but I will; but who in the dingnation's
a-going' to pay for it? Do you reckon your pap -- "
"Why that's all right. Miss Hooker she tole me,
particular, that her uncle Hornback -- "
"Great guns! is he her uncle? Looky here, you break
for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west
when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile
out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you
out to Jim Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. And
don't you fool around any, because he'll want to
know the news. Tell him I'll have his niece all safe
before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now; I'm
a-going up around the corner here to roust out my
engineer."
I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the
corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed
her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water
about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among
some woodboats; for I couldn't rest easy till I
could
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see the ferryboat start. But take it all around, I
was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking
all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a
done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I
judged she would be proud of me for helping these
rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is
the kind the widow and good people takes the most
interest in.
Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and
dusky, sliding along down! A kind of cold shiver
went through me, and then I struck out for her. She
was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't
much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled
all around her and hollered a little, but there
wasn't any answer; all dead still. I felt a little
bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for
I reckoned if they could stand it I could.
Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the
middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and
when I judged I was out of eye-reach I laid on my
oars, and looked back and see her go and smell
around the wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders,
because the captain would know her uncle Hornback
would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat
give it up and went for the shore, and I laid into
my work and went a-booming down the river.
It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light
showed up; and when it did show it looked like it
was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the
sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east;
so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and
sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead
people.
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