nywhere I want to. Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know
that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can
paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I
want. Jackson's Island's the place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I
woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked
around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and
miles across. The moon was so bright I could 'a' counted the
drift-logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of
yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late,
and _smelt_ late. You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put
it in.

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and
start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty
soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that
comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped
out through the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away
across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept
a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn't but one man
in it. Thinks I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He
dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up
shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could 'a' reached
out the gun and touched him. Well, it _was_ pap, sure enough--and
sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.

I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down-stream
soft, but quick, in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half,
and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more toward the middle of
the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry-landing,
and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood,
and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I
laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking
away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when
you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before.
And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people
talking at the ferry-landing. I heard what they said, too--every word
of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short
nights now. T'other one said _this_ warn't one of the short ones, he
reckoned--and then they laughed, and he said it over