บทที่ บทที่ 13 · 第13章

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 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, 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 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 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?”

“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 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 I

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.”

“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 see the ferry-boat

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 ferry-boat; 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 ferry-boat 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.