“Well, we hollered and took on, but it’s so wide there we couldn’t make nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and Miss Hooker she said if I didn’t strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he’d fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, ‘What, in such a night and such a current? There ain’t no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.’ Now if you’ll go and⁠—”

“By Jackson, I’d like to, and, blame it, I don’t know but I will; but who in the dingnation’s a-going’ to pay for it? Do you reckon your pap⁠—”

“Why that’s all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, particular , that her uncle Hornback⁠—”