we can wait the two hours anyway and see
Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that’s a considerble sight better ‘n killin’ of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git aroun’ it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”
“Yes, I reck’n you are. But s’pose she DON’T break up and wash off?”
“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can’t we?”
“All right, then; come along.”
So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “Jim !” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and I says:
“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the wreck there’s one of ’em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat we can put ALL of ’em in a bad fix — for the sheriff ‘ll get ’em. Quick — hurry! I’ll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You start at the raft, and –”
“Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF’? Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done broke loose en gone I — en here we is!”
WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering. We’d GOT to find that boat now — had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too — seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any further — so scared he hadn’t hardly any strength left, he said.
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