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 still 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 didn'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.
