CHAPTER VII.
ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
E are going to have a change of weather, I reckon," Hiram said one afternoon as they were drifting down the stream during their second voyage. "You have been lucky since we started, but we are going to have a change at last; and I can tell you when it blows here it's a caution. They have been having a lot of rain up the country, for the river has been rising regular for the last ten days. We had best make fast for the night, and the sooner we does it the better, for the wind is getting up fast and the rain is just a-going to begin."
In a quarter of an hour the boat was moored to a great tree at the lower end of an island.
"We shall be snug here," he said, "and out of the way of the drift that will be coming down presently. You can turn in and take a long spell of sleep to-night, for sometimes those storms last for days when they come on this time of year, and you will see there will be a sea on that the boat could hardly live in. I wish we had stopped two hours ago; there was a creek where we could have run her in and been snug all through it, but I didn't think it was coming up so quick, and it's too far on to the next place to risk it; however, I expect we shall do very well here."
In another half-hour the gale burst upon them furiously, and Frank congratulated himself that the boat was snugly moored. The thick muddy water of the river was speedily lashed into angry waves; the rain came down in torrents, and although the left-hand bank was but a quarter of a mile distant it was soon lost to view. Frank was glad to leave the deck and crawl into the little cabin, and sit down to a hot meal which the negro cook had prepared.
"Better here than outside, my lad," Hiram said. "I can go as wet as any man if need be, but I like to keep a dry jacket when I can. The wind is just howling outside. I reckon this is going to be a bigger storm nor ordinary, and I have seen some biggish storms on the Mississippi too. I have had some narrer escapes of it, I can tell you, special in the days before there was nary a tug on the river, and we had to row or pole all the way up; besides there ain't so many trees brought down as there used to be in a flood, seeing as the country is getting more and more cleared every day.