I just give up, then.I knowed what the matter was.Thatcut

　　bank was an island, and Jim had gone down 'tother sideof it.It

　　warn't no tow-head, that you could float by in tenminutes.It had

　　the big timber of a regular island；it mightbe five or six mile

　　long and more than a half a mile wide.

　　I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes,

　　Ireckon.I was floating along, of course, four or five mile anhour；

　　but you don't ever think of that.No, you feel like youare laying

　　dead still on the water；and if a little glimpse of a snap slips

　　by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're go-ing, but you

　　catch your breath and think my！how that snag'stearing along.lf

　　you think it ain't dismal and lonesome outin 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；atlast

　　I hears the answer a loog ways off, and tries to follow it, but

　　I couldn't do it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nestof

　　towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on bothsides of

　　me, sometimes just a narrow channel between；andsome that I couldn't

　　see, I knowed was there, because I'd hearthe wash of the current

　　against the old dead brush and trashthat hung over the banks.Well,

　　I warn't long losing thewhoops, down amongst the towheads；and I

　　only tried to chasethem a little while, anyway, because it was worse

　　than chas-ing a Jack-o-lantern.You never knowed a sound dodge

　　aroundso, and swap places so quick and so much.

　　I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively, four or

　　fivetimes, to keep from knocking the islands out of the river；

　　andso I judged the raft must be butting into the bank every nowand

　　then, or else it would get further ahead and clear out ofhearing—

　　it was floating a little faster than what I was.

　　Well, I seemed to be in the open river again, by-and-by, butouldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres.I reckonedJim had

　　fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up withhim.I was good

　　and tired, so I laid down in the canoe andsaid 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 thoughtI would take just one little cat-nap.

　　But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I wakedup

　　the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and Iwas

　　spinning down a big bend stern first.First I didn't knowwhere I

　　was；I thought I was dreaming；and when things be-gun to come back

　　to me, they seemed to come up dim out oflast week.

　　It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and

　　thethickest kind of timber on both banks；just a solid wall, aswell