13
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:
‘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 a-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’ 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 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 began to think how dreadful it was, 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 we was 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 jack-staff of a double-hull ferry-boat. I skimmed around for the watchman, 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 give 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 stretched, and then he says:
‘Hallo, 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 watch-man, 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?’
‘Why, pap, and mam, and sis, and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your ferry-boat 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 get 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
