him in discoloured
shreds like a mop. The sun had touched him a bit. He had taken to
always polishing one particular button, which just held on to his left
wrist, and to always calling for stationery. I suppose that man called
for pens, ink, and paper, tape, and scaling-wax, upwards of one thousand
times in four-and-twenty hours. He had an idea that we should never get
out of that river unless we were written out of it in a formal
Memorandum; and the more we laboured at navigating the rafts, the more he
ordered us not to touch them at our peril, and the more he sat and roared
for stationery.

Mrs. Pordage, similarly, persisted in wearing her nightcap. I doubt if
any one but ourselves who had seen the progress of that article of dress,
could by this time have told what it was meant for. It had got so limp
and ragged that she couldn't see out of her eyes for it. It was so
dirty, that whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp, or weeds out
of the river, or an old porter's-knot from England, I don't think any new
spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortunate old woman had a notion
that it was not only vastly genteel, but that it was the correct thing as
to propriety. And she really did carry herself over the other ladies who
had no nightcaps, and who were forced to tie up their hair how they
could, in a superior manner that was perfectly amazing.

I don't know what she looked like, sitting in that blessed nightcap, on a
log of wood, outside the hut or cabin upon our raft. She would have
rather resembled a fortune-teller in one of the picture-books that used
to be in the shop windows in my boyhood, except for her stateliness. But,
Lord bless my heart, the dignity with which she sat and moped, with her
head in that bundle of tatters, was like nothing else in the world! She
was not on speaking terms with more than three of the ladies. Some of
them had, what she called, "taken precedence" of her--in getting into, or
out of, that miserable little shelter!--and others had not called to pay
their respects, or something of that kind. So, there she sat, in her own
state and ceremony, while her husband sat on the same log of wood,
ordering us one and all to let the raft go to the bottom, and to bring
him stationery.

What with this noise on the part of Mr. Commissioner Pordage, and what
with the cries of Sergeant Drooce on the raft astern (which were
sometimes more than Tom Packer could silence), we often made