Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV.

WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to
Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio
River comes in, and that was what we was after. We
would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way
up the Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out
of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and
we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to
try to run in a fog; but when I paddled ahead in the
canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't any-
thing but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line
around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank,
but there was a stiff current, and the raft come boom-
ing down so lively she tore it out by the roots and
away she went. I see the fog closing down, and it
made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most
a half a minute it seemed to me -- and then there warn't
no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. I
jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and
grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. But
she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't
untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was
so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do
anything with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft,
hot and heavy, right down the towhead. That was
all right as far as it went, but the towhead warn't
sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of
it I shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no
more idea which way I was going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll
run into the bank or a towhead or something; I got
to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety busi-
ness to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I
whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres
I hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I
went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again.
The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it,
but heading away to the right of it. And the next
time I was heading away to the left of it -- and not
gaining on it much either, for I was flying around, this
way and that and t'other, but it was going straight
ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan,
and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was
the still places between the whoops that was making
the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop BEHIND me. I was tangled good
now. That was somebody else's whoop, or else I was
turned around.

I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop
again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place;
it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept