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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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This speech was addressed to Tom quite confidentially, as if it was something that would be especially interesting to him. Tom made no answer. The trader searched the boat from stem to stern, among boxes, bales and bar- rels, around the machinery, by the chimneys, in vain. “Now, I say, Tom, be fair about this yer,” he said, when, after a fruitless search, he came where Tom was standing. “You know something about it, now. Don’t tell me,- I know you do. I saw the gal stretched out here about ten o’clock, and ag’in at twelve, and ag’in between one and two; and then at four she was gone, and you was a sleeping right there all the time. Now, you know something,- you can’t help it.” “Well, Mas’r,” said Tom, “towards morning something brushed by me, and I kinder half woke; and then I hearn a great splash, and, then I clare woke up, and the gal was gone. That’s all I know on’t.” The trader was not shocked nor amazed; because, as we said before, he was used to a great many things that you are not used to. Even the awful presence of Death struck no solemn chill upon him. He had seen Death many times,- met him in the way of trade, and got acquainted with him,- and he only thought of him as a hard customer, that embarrassed his property operations very unfairly; and so he only swore that the gal was a baggage, and that he was devilish unlucky, and that, if things went on in this way, he should not make a cent on the trip. In short, he seemed to consider himself an ill-used man, decidedly; but there was no help for it, as the woman had escaped into a state which never will give up a fugitive,- not |
