The Portable Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there jumped up and says:—

  “Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he’s my meat.”

  Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with fringes, and says, “You lay thar tell the chawin-up’s done;” and flung his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says, “You lay thar tell his sufferins is over.”

  Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and shouted out:—

  “Whoo-oop! I’m the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ears! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”

  All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his breast with his fist, saying, “Look at me gentlemen!” When he got through, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and let off a roaring “Whoo-oop! I’m the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives!”

  Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like this:—

  “Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow’s a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! whoo-oop! I’m a child of sin, don’t let me get a start! Smoked glass, here, for all! Don’t attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen! When I’m playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! When I’m cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I’m hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I’m thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun’s face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains! Contemplate me through leather—don’t use the naked eye! I’m the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises!” He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out: “Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the Pet Child of Calamity’s a-coming!”

  Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again—the first one—the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time, swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into each other’s faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names, and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob called him a heap rougher names and the Child come back at him with the very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child’s hat off, and the Child picked it up and kicked Bob’s ribbony hat about six foot; Bob went and got it and said never mind, this war n’t going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now, never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on account of his family, if he had one.

  Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says:—

  “Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I’ll thrash the two of ye!”

  And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they could get up. Why, it war n’t two minutes till they begged like dogs—and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the way through, and shout “Sail in, Corpse-Maker!” “Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity!” “Bully for you, little Davy!” Well, it was a perfect pow-wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they was sneaks and cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said they had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones.

  So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the after-sweeps.

  I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played, and another patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn’t keep that up very long without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.

  They sung “jolly, jolly raftsman’s the life for me,” with a rousing chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and their different kinds of habits; and next about women and their different ways; and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire; and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next about differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of this yalier Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to three quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage of the river, and then it war n’t no better then Ohio water—what you wanted to do was to keep it sitrred up—and when the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.

  The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritousness in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his stomach if he wanted to. He says:—

  “You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won’t grow worth shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It’s all on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don’t richen a soil any.”

  And they talked about how Ohio water did n’t like to mix with Mississippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is low, you’ll find a wide band of clear water all the w
ay down the east side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of the way across. Then they talked about how to keep tobacco from getting mouldy, and from that they went into ghosts and told about a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says:—

  “Why don’t you tell something that you’ve seen yourselves? Now let me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick Allbright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard—gaping and stretching, he was—and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe, and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says,—

  “‘Why looky-here,’ he says, ‘ain’t that Buck Miller’s place, over yander in the bend?’

  “‘Yes,’ says I, ‘it is—why?’ He laid his pipe down and leant his head on his hand, and says,—

  “‘I thought we’d be furder down.’ I says,—

  “‘I thought it too, when I went off watch’—we was standing six hours on and six off—‘but the boys told me,’ I says, ‘that the raft didn’t seem to hardly move, for the last hour,’—says I, ‘though she’s a slipping along all right, now,’ says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says,—

  “‘I’ve seed a raft act so before, ‘along here,’ he says, ‘’pears to me the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin’ the last two years,’ he says.

  “Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is always doing what he sees somebody else doing, though there may n’t be no sense in it. Pretty soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to stabboard and quartering behind us. I see he was looking at it, too. I says,—

  “‘What’s that?’ He says, sort of pettish,—

  “‘Tain’t nothing but an old empty bar’l.’

  “‘An empty bar’l!’ says I, ‘why,’ says I, ‘a spy-glass is a fool to your eyes. How can you tell it’s an empty bar’l?’ He says,—

  “‘I don’t know; I reckon it ain’t a bar’l, but I thought it might be,’ says he.

  “‘Yes,’ I says, ‘so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a body can’t tell nothing about it, such a distance as that,’ I says.

  “We had n’t nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and by I says,—

  “‘Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing’s a-gaining on us, I believe.’

  “He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I judged it must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the moonshine, and, by George, it was a bar’l. Says I,—

  “‘Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar’l, when it was a half a mile off,’ says I. Says he,—

  “‘I don’t know.’ Says I,—

  “‘You tell me, Dick Allbright.’ He says,—

  “‘Well, I knowed it was a bar’l; I’ve seen it before; lots has seen it; they says it’s a hanted bar’l.’

  “I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I told them what Dick said. It floated right along abreast, now, and did n’t gain any more. It was about twenty foot off. Some was for having it aboard, but the rest did n’t want to. Dick Allbright said rafts that had fooled with it had got bad luck by it. The captain of the watch said he did n’t believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar’l gained on us because it was in a little better current than what we was. He said it would leave by and by.

  “So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song, and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar’l stuck right thar in the same place, and the song did n’t seem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so they did n’t finish it, and there war n’t any cheers, but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then everybody tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it war n’t no use, they did n’t laugh, and even the chap that made the joke did n’t laugh at it, which ain’t usual. We all just settled down glum, and watched the bar’l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable. Well, sir, it shut down black and still, and then the wind begin to moan around, and next the lightning begin to play and the thunder to grumble. And pretty soon there was a regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was running aft stumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to lay up. This made the boys shake their heads. And every time the lightning come, there was that bar’l with the blue lights winking around it. We was always on the look-out for it. But by and by, towards dawn, she was gone. When the day come we could n’t see her anywhere, and we war n’t sorry, neither.

  “But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the stabboard side. There war n’t no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn; nobody talked; you could n’t get anybody to do anything but set around moody and look at the bar’l. It begun to cloud up again. When the watch changed, the off watch stayed up, ’stead of turning in. The storm ripped and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar’l left towards day, and nobody see it go.

  “Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don’t mean the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone,—not that. They was quiet, but they all drunk more than usual,—not together,—but each man sidled off and took it private, by himself.

  “After dark the off watch did n’t turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked; the boys did n’t scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar’l again. She took up her old place. She staid there all night; nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar’l jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go,—and no more sprained ankles for them, they said. They would n’t even walk aft. Well then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of the after watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, says you? Why sprained their ankles!”

  “The bar’l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn. Well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talked low together. But none of them herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake. If he come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away. They would n’t man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and would n’t let the dead men be took ashore to be planted; he did n’t believe a man that got ashore would come back; and he was right.

  “After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be trouble if that bar’l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he’d seen the bar’l on other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore. Some said, let’s all go ashore in a pile, if the bar’l comes again.

  “This kind of whispers was till going on, the men being bunched together forrard watching for the bar’l, when, lo and behold you, here she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain, and says:—

 
“‘Boys, don’t be a pack of children and fools; I don’t want this bar’l to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and you don’t; well, then, how’s the best way to stop it? Burn it up,—that’s the way. I’m going to fetch it aboard,’ he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he went.

  “He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick Allbright’s baby; he owned up and said so.

  “‘Yes,’ he says, a-leaning over it, ‘yes, it is my own lamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,’ says he,—for he could curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,—which was prob’ly a lie,—and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar’l, before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar’l had chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar’l did n’t come any more after that. He said if the men would stand it one more night,—and was a-going on like that,—but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.”

  “Who was shedding tears?” says Bob; “was it Allbright or the baby?”

  “Why, Allbright, of course; didn’t I tell you the baby was dead? Been dead three years—how could it cry?”

  “Well, never mind how it could cry—how could it keep all that time?” says Davy. “You answer me that.”