as going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank
or a towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's
mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a
time. I whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres I hears a
small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it,
listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't
heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. And the next time
I was heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much
either, for I was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it
was going straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the
time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops
that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop _behind_ me. I was tangled good now. That was
somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its
place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me
again, and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head
down-stream, and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other
raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for
nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed
me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly
roared, the current was tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set
perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I
didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was
an island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no
towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber
of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than
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 miles 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