From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R.
Osgood and Company
By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now departed
and hardly remembered raft life, I will throw in, in this place, a
chapter from a book which I have been working at by fits and starts
during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course
of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in
the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard
of my time out West there. He has run away from his persecuting father,
and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice
truth-telling respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of the
widow's has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber raft
(it is high water and dead summer-time), and are floating down the river
by night and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence the
negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a fog,
they pass Cairo without knowing it. By-and-by they begin to suspect the
truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming
down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead of them,
creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the needed
information by eavesdropping:--
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to
find a thing out. We talked it over, and by-and-by Jim said it was such
a black night now that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big
raft and crawl aboard and listen,--they would talk about Cairo, because
they would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or
anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could 'most
always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light. By-and-by, when I got down nearly to her, I
eased up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all
right--nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was
'most abreast the camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and
inched along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather
side of the fire. There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on
deck, of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot too. They had a jug, and
tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing--roaring,
you may say; and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway. He roared
through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.
When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung. It begun:--
"There was a woman in our towdn.
In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell),
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'l.
"Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,
Ri-loo, riloo, rilay---e,
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'l."
And so on--fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he was going
to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow
died on; and another one said, "Oh, give us a rest." And another one
told him to take a walk. They made fun of him till he got mad and jumped
up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the
lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says:--
"Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat."
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together
every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes,
and says, "You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;" and flung his hat
down, which was all over ribbons, and says, "You lay thar tell his
sufferins is over."
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and
shouted out:--
"Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,
copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm
the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a
hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly
related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take
nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whisky for breakfast when I'm in
robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm
ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the
thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to
my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is
music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold
your breath, for I'm 'bout to turn myself loose!"
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and
looking fierce and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking
up his wrist-bands and now and then straightening up and beating his
breast with his fist, saying "Look at me, gentlemen!" When he got
through he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and let
off a roaring "Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives!"
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down
over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged
and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and
drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about
three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he
straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times
before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like
this:--"Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's
a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working!
whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin; _don't_ let me get a start! Smoked glass,
here, for all! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye,
gentlemen! When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and
parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for
whales! I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep
with the thunder! When I'm cold I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in
it; when I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm
thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the
earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and
spread! I put my hand on the sun's face and make it night in the earth;
I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and
crumble the mountains! Contemplate me through leather--_don't_ use the
naked eye! I'm the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The
massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the
destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life! The
boundless vastness of the great American desert is my inclosed property,
and I bury my dead on my own premises!" He jumped up and cracked his
heels together three times before he lit (they cheered him again), and
as he came down he shouted out: "Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for
the pet child of calamity's a-coming!"
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first
one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time,
swelling round and round each other and punching their fists 'most into
each other's faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called
the Child names, and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob
called him a heap rougher names, and the Child come back at him with the
very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and
the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob
went and got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of
this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive,
and so the Child better look out; for there was a time a-coming, just
as sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with
the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he
was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, _now_,
never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded
in his blood; for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a
little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says:--
"Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash
the two of ye!"
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that,
he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they could
get up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs--and how
the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way
through, and shout "Sail in, Corpse-Maker!" "Hi! at him again, Child of
Calamity!" "Bully for you, little Davy!" Well, it was a perfect pow-wow
for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when they
got through. Little Davy made them own up that they was sneaks and
cowards, and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob
and the Child shook hands with each other very solemn, and said they had
always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones.
So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then there was a
loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went forward to
man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the after-sweeps.