ed to say, anyway.

Mornings before daylight I slipped into corn-fields and borrowed a
watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things
of that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if
you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it
warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would
do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was
partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three
things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he
reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it
over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up
our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the
mushmelons, or what. But toward daylight we got it all settled
satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons. We
warn't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now.
I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever
good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning
or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, we
lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight,
with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a
solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of
itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight
river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I,
"Hel-_lo_, Jim, looky yonder!" It was a steamboat that had killed
herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The
lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of
her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy
clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat
hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come.

Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so
mysterious-like, I felt just the way any other boy would 'a' felt when
I seen that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle
of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little,
and see what there was there. So I says:

"Le's land on her, Jim."

But Jim was dead against it at first. He says:

"I doan' want to go fool'n' 'long er no wrack. We's doin' blame' w