WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after.

We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.
Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but little saplings to tie to.

I passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went.

I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards.

I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke.