down by
the darkies' sabres. We took 'em down to the next place and handed 'em
over to the sheriff; and as thar happened to be a lot of boats waiting
thar for the wind, you may guess it warn't many hours afore they tried
and hung 'em.

"When the chaps heard the particulars, and that we had sunk one boat,
besides bringing off another, they guessed as likely enough the pirates
war trapped thar; and so they got up a regular expedition, six boats,
each with a dozen men. I went back to show 'em the place. They brought
dogs with them, and hunted through the woods and swamps till they came
to the patch of higher ground whar the pirates had got thar huts. Thar
were about twenty of 'em, mostly negroes, and they fought hard, for thar
was no escape, the boat having drifted away after it had sunk. Behind
thar war some widish channels, and some of the boats had gone round thar
to cut 'em off if they took to swimming. They war killed, every man
jack, and that put an end to one of the very worst lots of pirates we
ever had on the river."

"You were lucky to have got out of it so well, Hiram. I suppose that
sort of thing is quite over now."

"Yes. In course thar are water thieves still, chaps who steal things
from the boats if thar is no one with 'em, or if you are all asleep
below; but thar haven't been no real pirates for years now--leastways
not above New Orleans. Down in the great swamps, by the mouth of the
river, thar's always gangs of runaway slaves, and desperate characters
of all sorts, who have got to live somehow. Thar are still boats
sometimes missing up the river, which may have been snagged and gone
down with all hands, and which may be have comed to thar end some other
way. Anyhow, no one thinks much about pirates now, and the river's quite
as safe as the streets of New Orleans. That mayn't be saying much,
perhaps, but it's good enough. Of course a party might any day take to
the swamps and stop up-passing boats, just as they might take to the
roads and stop waggons going west; but one doesn't trouble about things
onless they get so as to be what you might call a general danger.

"You can't go into a bar-room without a risk of getting into a fight
with a drunken rowdy; you can't stop at one of these landing-places but
what thar's a chance of getting into a mess with fellows who come in
from the backs for a spree, and one doesn't look to have these rivers
which, one and the other, are tens of thousands of miles long,