“Well, I tried to rise, but I’d as well tried to rise down’ard. I then tried to swim up ’bove the raft, but I found from the way the logs and vines ware tearin’ the extras off me, that I were goin’ further under, and I was gettin’ out of wind very fast. I knowed thar was but one chance, and that was to go clean through! So I busted loose and set my paddles to goin’ mightily; presently my head bumped agin the drift! I div agin, and kept my paddles a lumberin’! Chunk! my head went agin a log, and then I knowed the thing were irrefrangably out—but I div agin, still workin’ on my oars smartly, until I hung agin!
“ ‘Good bye, Chunkey!—farewell, Governor,’ says I.
“But, Capting, I were all the time tryin’ to do something. Things had begun to look speckled green, and then omniferous; but findin’ I were not gone yet, by the way I were kickin’ and pawin’, and knowin’ I were goin’ somewhere, and expectin’ to the devil, there ain’t no tellin’ how long or powerful I did work! The fust thing I recollect arter that, was gittin’ a mouthful of wind! Fact! I’d done, gone clean through, and were hangin’ on to a tree below the raft! But, Sir, I were mighty weak, and couldent tell a stump from an old he, and ’spected smartly for some time that I were in the yother world, and commenced an excuse for comin’ so onexpectedly! However, presently I got sorter right, and when I found I were safe, I reckon you never did see a man feel so unanimous in your life, and I made the water fly for joy.”
“Well, Jim, what had become of Chunkey? He did not leave you?”
“Yes, —— if he diddent? He’d commenced gittin’ dry afore he shot the deer; and when Chunkey wants a drink, if his daddy was drounin’, Chunkey would go to the licker gourd afore he’d go to his daddy. I went to the house, and thar he was settin’ at the table, jist a rattlin’ his teeth agin the bar’s ribs; he held a tin cup in one hand ’bout half full of licker; his head were sorter throwd back; he was breathin’ sorter hard, his eye set on the Governor, humpin’ himself on politics.
“ ‘Down with the specie kurrency,’ says Chunkey; ’it ain’t no account, and I’m agin it. When we had good times, I drank five-dollar-a-gallon brandy, and had pockets full of money.’
“ ‘But,’ says the Governor, ‘you bought the brandy on a credit, and never paid for it!’
“ ‘What’s the difference?’ asks Chunkey. ‘Them what I bought it from never paid for it; they bought it on a credit from them fureigners, and never paid for it, and them fureigners, you say, are a pack of scoundrels, and I go in for ruinin’ ’em, so far as good licker is concarned.’
“ ‘You are drunk,’ says the Governor, and then——but, Capting, you look sleepy; let’s licker, and go to bed.”
“No, I am not sleepy, Jim.”