after us.

So we shoved out after dark on the raft.

Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a
snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe
it now if they read on and see what more it done for us.

The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we
didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and
more. Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next
meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you
can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then
along comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern, and judged
she would see it. Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us;
they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the
reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the
whole river.

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she
was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see
how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites
off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and
thinks he's mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was
going to try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a
bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking
like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a
sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open
furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and
guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling
of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of
steam--and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she
come smashing straight through the raft.

I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel
had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could
always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a
minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was
nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of
my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current; and
of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she
stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was
churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though
I could hear her.

I sun