rocking about, and that I was left alone here on this
big river, with the Don waiting for a chance to send that knife of his
through me.

"Now, you needn't go thinking it was because I cared anything about you,
Mas'r Harry," continued Tom in a sulky voice, "for it wasn't that: it
was only just because I was a weak great booby, and got a wondering what
your poor mother would say when I got home, and then, I couldn't help
it, if I didn't get crying away like a great girl kep' in at school, for
I don't know how long, and the canoe gliding away all the time on the
river.

"Getting rid of all that warm water made me less soft; and when Mas'r
Garcia got struggling again I give him two or three such wipes on the
head as must have wound him up a bit; and then, after nearly having the
boat over again, there we lay for hour after hour in the thick darkness,
getting stiff as stiff, as we kep' one another from doing mischief. And
then at last came the light, with the fog hanging over the river, thick
as the old washus at home when Sally Smith took off the copper-lid and
got stirring up the clothes. Then the sun came cutting through the
mist, chopping it up like golden wires through a cake of soap. There
was the green stuff like a hedge on both sides of the river, the parrots
a-screaming, the crockydiles crawling on to the mud-banks or floating
down, the birds a-fishing, and all looking as bright as could be, while
my heart was black as a furnace-hole, Mas'r Harry, and that
black-looking Don was close aside me.

"I ain't of a murderous disposition, Mas'r Harry, but I felt very nasty
then, in that bright, clear morning, though all the time I was thinking
what a nice place this world would be if it wasn't for wild beasts, and
men as makes themselves worse; for there was that Don's eye saying as
plain as could be:--

"`There ain't room enough in this here canoe for both of us, young man!'

"`Then it's you as must go out of it, Don Spaniard,' says my eyes.

"`No; it's you as must go out of it, you beggarly little soap-boiling
Englishman,' says his eyes.

"`It's my Mas'r Harry's gold, and if he's gone to the crockydiles I'll
save the treasure for his Miss Lilla and the old folks--so now, then!'
says my eyes.

"And all this, you know, was without a word being spoke; when all at
once if he didn't make a sort of a jump, and before I knew where we were
he was at one end of the canoe and I was at the other.

"Well, you may say