“Was it cooked?” persisted Jule. “Where did they get it?”
“Dey say it done lef’ de roos’ an’ follow dem into camp!”
“Did you eat a whole one?” asked Case. “A whole yellow-legged chicken?”
Mose grinned and showed the whites of his eyes.
“Ah shore did!” he replied, and Jule declared that he would willingly have helped him do it if he had only known about it!
“What were they talking about last night?” asked Clay, as the Rambler turned a bend and lost sight of the negroes and Sam, still gesticulating fiercely, on the east shore.
“They’re sho’ goin’ to get you-all!” was the reply. “They goin’ to steal dis boat, first thing you know. Ah’m scart ob dat white man!”
The little fellow could tell very little of the talk he had heard while detained in the negro camp. He knew that Sam, the Robber, was there with the negroes, and that he was continually urging them to help him secure the Rambler, but that was all. Of their plans he knew nothing but this.
During the afternoon the boys passed a great many steamers, going up the river, some with supplies for those who had been made homeless by the flood. Fortunately the levees had held, but the water had filled in back of them, in some instances and destroyed much property. The lagoons and swamps up river were still flooded, and in places farming land was still being washed away.
All the way down, until night closed in, they saw gangs of negroes on the levees, fishing drift wood out of the water. In some instances small out-houses were brought out in good condition. One shanty boat the boys saw had the cupola of a house set up on the prow, and a farm bell in the top of it was ringing as the raft bobbed in the currents of the river. Now and then families were seen gathered on the levees, evidently waiting for a steamer to take them off.