{{huckfp117.jpg}}

you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island;

it might be five or six mile long and more than a half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was

floating along, of course, four or five mile an hour; but you don't ever think of

that. No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little

glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but

you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. If you

think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the

night, you try it once -- you'll see. ssssssssss

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears the

answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it, and directly I

judged I'd got into a nest of tow-heads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on

both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between; and some that I

couldn't see, I knowed was there, because I'd hear the wash of the current against

the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't long

losing the whoops, down amongst the tow-heads; and I only tried to chase them

 [117]