ree people
could never abide), he had sworn to be revenged. After his defeat I
had confessed the charges were false, so far as he personally was
concerned, but this did not seem to appease him. He declared he would
"get even on me," and he did: he blew up the boat.

Being thus summarily set ashore, I determined that I would be
independent of common carriers destitute of common courtesy. I
purchased a wooden box, just large enough to admit one, and not
transferable. I lay down in this, double-locked it on the outside, and
carrying it to the river, launched it upon the watery waste. The box,
I soon discovered, had an hereditary tendency to turn over. I had
parted my hair in the middle before embarking, but the precaution was
inadequate; it secured not immunity, only impartiality, the box
turning over one way as readily as the other. I could counteract this
evil only by shifting my tobacco from cheek to cheek, and in this way
I got on tolerably well until my navy sprang a leak near the stern.

I now began to wish I had not locked down the cover; I could have got
out and walked ashore. But it was childish to give way to foolish
regrets; so I lay perfectly quiet, and yelled. Presently I thought of
my jack-knife. By this time the ship was so water-logged as to be a
little more stable. This enabled me to get the knife from my pocket
without upsetting more than six or eight times, and inspired hope.
Taking the whittle between my teeth, I turned over upon my stomach,
and cut a hole through the bottom near the bow. Turning back again, I
awaited the result. Most men would have awaited the result, I think,
if they could not have got out. For some time there was no result. The
ship was too deeply laden astern, where my feet were, and water will
not run up hill unless it is paid to do it. But when I called in all
my faculties for a good earnest think, the weight of my intellect
turned the scale. It was like a cargo of pig-lead in the forecastle.
The water, which for nearly an hour I had kept down by drinking it as
it rose about my lips, began to run out at the hole I had scuttled,
faster than it could be admitted at the one in the stern; and in a few
moments the bottom was so dry you might have lighted a match upon it,
if you had been there, and obtained the captain's permission.

[Illustration]

I was all right now. I had got into San Pablo Bay, where it was all
plain sailing. If I could manage to keep off the horizon I should b