, you FEEL like you are laying dead still on the
water; and if a little glimpse of 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
sawlogs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chased that;
then another, and this tim