But now I have given up.

I am going to die.

I made up my mind last night that it must be, and very soon, too.
You say you are going to revisit your river, by-and-bye, when you find opportunity.

Very well; that, together with a certain strange experience which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my history--for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for my sake you will stop there, and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will willingly undertake after you shall have heard my narrative.
Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being long.

You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to settle in that lonely region in the South.