We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the
country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark; then we
fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and
see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to
leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in
the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no
more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and
cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of the raft,
then?--and Jim--poor Jim!"
"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool had
made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery
the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what
he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and found
the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and shook
us, and run off down the river.'"
"I wouldn't shake my NIGGER, would I?--the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property."
"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him
OUR nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble
enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,
there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake.
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