ableness and we felt mighty good over it,
because it would 'a' been a miserable business to have any
unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a
raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind
towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no
kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best
way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.
If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no
objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't
no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing
else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind
of people is to let them have their own way.

CHAPTER XX

They asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we
covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead
of running--was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I:

"Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run _south?_"

No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so
I says:

"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born,
and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed
he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little
one-horse place on the river forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was
pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't
nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn't
enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other
way. Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he
ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans
on it. Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard
corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under
the wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was
only four years old, so they never come up 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 daytimes no more now;
nights they don't bother us."

The duke says:

"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to. I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan