gger and bigger, and keener and keener,
in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That
flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more
prevent it than you can prevent lightning."

"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,
I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."

"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur,
man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all.
People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's,
and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two
or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can come anywhere
near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very
particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or
whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so.
There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of
them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."

"Mars Tom!"

"It's so; I ain't joking."

"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but
there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always
been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them
as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.

We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for
the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed
down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to
feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So
we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most
noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes
stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.

It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find
land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got