Life on the Mississippi

Chapter 3 Frescoes from the Past-3

‘He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby. It was d**k Allbright’s baby; he owned up and said so.

‘”Yes,” he says, a-leaning over it, “yes, it is my own lamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,” says he,—for he could curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,—which was prob’ly a lie,—and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar’l, before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar’l had chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar’l didn’t come any more after that. He said if the men would stand it one more night,—and was a-going on like that,—but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.’

‘WHO was shedding tears?’ says Bob; ‘was it Allbright or the baby?’

‘Why, Allbright, of course; didn’t I tell you the baby was dead. Been dead three years—how could it cry?’

‘Well, never mind how it could cry—how could it KEEP all that time?’ says Davy. ‘You answer me that.’

‘I don’t know how it done it,’ says Ed. ‘It done it though—that’s all I know about it.’

‘Say—what did they do with the bar’l?’ says the Child of Calamity.

‘Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.’

‘Edward, did the child look like it was choked?’ says one.

‘Did it have its hair parted?’ says another.

‘What was the brand on that bar’l, Eddy?’ says a fellow they called Bill.

‘Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?’ says Jimmy.

‘Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.’ says Davy.

‘Him? O, no, he was both of ‘em,’ says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.

‘Say, Edward, don’t you reckon you’d better take a pill? You look bad— don’t you feel pale?’ says the Child of Calamity.

‘O, come, now, Eddy,’ says Jimmy, ‘show up; you must a kept part of that bar’l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole—do—and we’ll all believe you.’

‘Say, boys,’ says Bill, ‘less divide it up. Thar’s thirteen of us. I can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.’

Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear them a mile.

‘Boys, we’ll split a watermelon on that,’ says the Child of Calamity; and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so he says ‘Ouch!’ and jumped back.

‘Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys—there’s a snake here as big as a cow!’

So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.

‘Come out of that, you beggar!’ says one.

‘Who are you?’ says another.

‘What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.

‘Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.’

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says—

‘A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!’

‘No,’ says Big Bob, ‘less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!’

‘Good, that ‘s it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.’

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he says—

‘’Vast there! He ‘s nothing but a cub. ‘I’ll paint the man that tetches him!’

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn’t take it up.

‘Come here to the fire, and less see what you’re up to here,’ says Davy. ‘Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you been aboard here?’

‘Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,’ says I.

‘How did you get dry so quick?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I’m always that way, mostly.’

‘Oh, you are, are you. What’s your name?’

I warn’t going to tell my name. I didn’t know what to say, so I just says—

‘Charles William Allbright, sir.’

Then they roared—the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that, because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.

When they got done laughing, Davy says—

‘It won’t hardly do, Charles William. You couldn’t have growed this much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar’l, you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody’ll hurt you, if you ain’t up to anything wrong. What IS your name?’

‘Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.’

‘Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?’

‘From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him—’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Yes, sir; it’s as true as the world; Pap he says—’

‘Oh, your grandmother!’

They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and stopped me.

‘Now, looky-here,’ says Davy; ‘you’re scared, and so you talk wild. Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?’

‘Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But I warn’t born in her. It’s our first trip.’

‘Now you’re talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To steal?’

‘No, sir, I didn’t.—It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys does that.’

‘Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?’

‘Sometimes they drive the boys off.’

‘So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?’

‘’Deed I will, boss. You try me.’

‘All right, then. You ain’t but little ways from shore. Overboard with you, and don’t you make a fool of yourself another time this way.—Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!’

I didn’t wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore. When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home again.

The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire to offer in this place.

I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination—the marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.