Page:Life on the Mississippi (IA lifeonmississipptwai).pdf/113

 Rh of Satan that would rather send us all to destruction than put himself under obligations to me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth and privileged to snub captains and lord it over everything dead and alive in a steamboat. I presently climbed up on the bench; I did not think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunatic was on watch.

"ALL WELL—BUT ME." However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time, because the next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o'clock and all well—but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones and all of them trying to ache at once.

Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed that it was to do Mr. Wa benevolence.—tell him where he was. It took five minutes for the entire presposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr. Bixby's system, and then I judge it filled him nearly up to the chin; because he