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and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest -- fst! it was as bright

as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off

yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark

as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful

crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the

under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it's long

stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here.

Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."

"Well, you wouldn't a ben here, 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben

down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too, dat you

would, honey. Chickens knows when its gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile."

The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was

over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low

places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a good many miles wide;

but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across -- a half a mile --

because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. It was mighty cool

and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside. We went

winding in and out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung so thick

we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old broken-down

tree, you could see rabbits, and snakes, and such things; and when the island

had been overflowed a day or two, they got so tame, on account of being hungry,

that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to;

but not the snakes and turtles -- they would slide off in the water. The ridge

our cavern was in, was full of them. We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted

them.

One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft -- nice pine planks.

It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood

above water six or seven inches, a solid level floor. We could see saw-logs go

by in the daylight, sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in

daylight. ssssssssss

Another night, when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight,

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