TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they
slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It
was a monstrous big river down there -- sometimes a mile and a half wide; we
run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we
stopped navigating and tied up -- nearly always in the dead water under a
towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with
them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as
to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the
water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound
anywheres -- perfectly still -- just like the whole world was asleep, only
sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away
over the water, was a kind of dull line -- that was the woods on t'other side; you
couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness
spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any
more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away --
trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks -- rafts; sometimes you
could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds
come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know
by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks
on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the
water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in
the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a
woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it
anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over
there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the
flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying
