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no more. Well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because
people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me,
saying they believed he was a runaway nigger. We don't run day-times no more,
now; nights they don't bother us." ssssssssss
The duke says--
"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the day-time if we want
to. I'll think the thing over -- I'll invent a plan that'll fix it. We'll let it alone
for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in day-
light -- it mightn't be healthy." ssssssssss
Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning
was squirting around, low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to
shiver -- it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. So the duke and
the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. My
bed was a straw tick -- better than Jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's
always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and
when you roll over, the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of
dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed
he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. He says --
"I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a
corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace'll take the
shuck bed yourself." ssssssssss
Jim and me was in a sweat again, for a minute, being afraid there was going
to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke
says --
"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of
oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit;
'tis my fate. I am alone in the world -- let me suffer; I can bear it."
We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand well
out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways
below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of lights by-and-by -- that
was the town, you know -- and slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. When
we was three-quarters of a mile below, we hoisted up our signal lantern; and
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