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.

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 towheads, 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 loosing
the whoops down amongst the towheads; and I only tried to chase them a
little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a
Jack-o'-lantern. You never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap
places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to
keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the
raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it
would get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a
little faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't
hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a
snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I
laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't
want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help
it; so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars
was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a
big bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was
dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come
up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest
kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could
see by the stars. I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on
the water. I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but
a couple of saw-logs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and
chased that; then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head