Two or three days and nights went by; I might say they flew, they was so quiet and smooth and nice. Here is the way we put in the time: It was a great big river down there -- sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, but soon as night was almost gone we stopped sailing and tied up -- nearly always in the dead water under a little island; and then cut young trees and covered the raft with them. Then we set out the fishing lines. Next we would get into the river and have a swim, so as to clean up and cool off; then we would sit on the sand on the bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watch the sun come up. Not a sound anywhere -- perfectly quiet -- just like the whole world was asleep, apart from maybe a few frogs at times. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of grey line -- that was the trees on t’other side; you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a light place in the sky; then more light reaching out; then the river would show up softly away off, and it weren’t black any more, but grey; you could see little dark spots moving along ever so far away -- business boats, and such things; and long black lines -- rafts.
At times you could hear an oar moving; or mixed up voices, it was so quiet, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a line on the water which you know by the look of it that there was a branch sticking up in the movement of water that breaks on it; and you see like a little cloud coming up off of the water, and the east turns red, and the river too, and then you can make out a log cabin looking out through the trees, away on t’other side of the river, often being a timber yard, likely with the cut timber made to look like more than it was by putting pieces on top of each other in a way to leave holes big enough to throw a dog through. Then a nice wind comes up, so cool and clean and sweet to smell on because of the trees and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish lying around, and they do get pretty awful; and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song birds just going at it!
By that time our little smoke wouldn’t be easy to see, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And after, we would watch the big empty river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep, then wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a river boat coughing along up the river, so far off toward t'other side you couldn’t tell nothing about her only if she was a back wheel or a side wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn’t be nothing to hear and nothing to see -- just solid empty.
Next you’d see a raft going by, away off in the distance, and maybe a man on it cutting timber, because they’re most always doing it on a raft; you’d see the axe fly up and come down -- you don’t hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it’s above the man’s head then you hear the k’chunk! -- it had took all that time to come over the water.
So we'd put in the whole day, lazying around, listening to the quiet.
Once there was a thick fog, and people on rafts and things that went by was hitting tin pans so the river boats wouldn’t run over them. A flat boat or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and using bad language and laughing -- heard them clear as anything; but we couldn’t see no sign of them; it made you feel strange; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:
"No; spirits wouldn’t say, ‘Curse the cursed fog.’"
Soon as it was night out we would push off again. When we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her go wherever the river wanted her to; then we smoked the pipes, and put our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things -- we was always without real clothes, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us -- the new clothes Buck’s family made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn’t go much on clothes, anyway.
Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Off in the distance was the sides and the islands, across the water; and maybe the smallest little light -- which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a light or two -- on a raft or a flat boat, you know; and maybe you could hear a violin or a song coming over from one of them. It’s great to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all covered with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and talk about if they was made or only just happened. Jim he believed they was made, but I believed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a made them; well, that seemed easy enough to believe, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a fog make almost as many, so that proved it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them come flying down. Jim believed it was ones that was too selfish and they was being pushed out of the nest.
One or two times each night we would see a river-boat coming along in the dark, and now and then she would cough up a whole world of fire and smoke from out of her chimneys, and the little pieces of fire would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her noise shut off and leave the river quiet again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and move the raft a little, and after that you wouldn’t hear nothing for you couldn’t tell how long, apart from maybe frogs or something.
After midnight the people went to bed, and then for two or three hours both sides of the river was black -- no more lights in the cabin windows. These lights was our clock -- the first one that showed again would tell us that morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.
One morning just after the sun come up I found a canoe and crossed a channel between the island and the side of the river -- it was only two hundred yards -- and went about a mile up a shallow little side river with a lot of trees on it, to see if I couldn’t get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where one could walk across the little river because of shallow water, here comes two men running toward me as fast as they could foot it.
I thought I was a goner, for whenever anyone was after anyone I judged it was me -- or maybe Jim. I was about to take off in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and shouted out and begged me to save their lives -- said they hadn’t been doing nothing, and was in trouble for it -- said there was men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says: "Don’t you do it. I don’t hear the dogs and horses yet; you’ve got time to squeeze through the bushes and get up the river a little ways; then you take to the water and walk down to me and get in -- that’ll throw the dogs off the smell."
They done it, and soon as they was in I headed for our island. In five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, shouting. We heard them come along toward the side river, but couldn’t see them; they seemed to stop and act confused a while; then, as we got farther and farther away, we could only just hear them; by the time we had left a mile of trees behind us and come to the river, everything was quiet, and we went over to the island to hide in the trees where we was safe.
One of these men was about seventy or more, and had no hair and a very grey beard. He had an old knocked about soft hat on, and a dirty blue shirt, and very old blue pants pushed down into the top of his tall shoes, and a knitted rope over one shoulder to hold up the pants. He had an old blue coat with gold buttons over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, dirty bags made from rugs.
The other one was about thirty, and dressed about as poorly. After breakfast we all rested and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these men didn’t know one another.
"What got you into trouble?" says the old man to t’other.
"Well, I’d been selling a chemical to take hard dirt off the teeth -- and it does take it off, too, but most of the time it takes some of the tooth along with it -- and I stayed about one night longer than I should have, and was just in the act of leaving when I ran across you on this side of town, and you said they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was running from trouble myself, and would run off with you. That’s the whole story -- what’s yours?
"Well, I’d been doing a little preaching there about a week, and the women, big and little, liked me because I was making it mighty warm for the drinkers, I tell you, and taking as much as five or six dollars a night -- ten cents a head, with children and slaves free -- and business was growing all the time, when one way or another a little story got around last night that I had been doing a little secret drinking myself. A slave warned me this morning, and told me the people was coming together on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they’d be along pretty soon and give me about half an hour’s start, and then run me down if they could; and if they got me they would put tar and feathers on me. I didn’t wait for no breakfast -- I weren’t hungry."
"Old man," said the young one, "I think we could work together as a team; what do you think?"
"I ain’t against it. What’s your line -- mostly?"
"I learned to do printing as a boy; make a little of my own medicines; do some acting -- serious parts, you know; take a turn at telling people about themselves from the shape of their head when I can; teach, anything from singing to history, for a change; give talks sometimes -- oh, I do lots of things -- most anything that comes up, so long as it ain’t work. What’s your thing?"
"I’ve done a lot in the doctoring way in my time. Laying on of hands is my best trick -- for cancer and people that can’t move, and such things; and I can tell a person’s future pretty good when I’ve got someone along to find out things for me. Preaching’s my line, too, and missionary work."
Nobody never said a thing for a while; then the young man breathed out loudly and says: "Oh me, oh my!"
"What are you oh mying about?" says the head with no hair.
"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be pulled down into such company." And he started to rub the corner of his eye with a cloth.
"Cook your skin, ain’t the company good enough for you?" says the head with no hair, pretty proud like.
"Yes, it is good enough for me; it’s as good as I’m worth; for who brought me so low when I was so high? I did it myself. I don’t blame you, my friends -- far from it; I don’t blame anyone. I had it all coming. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know -- there’s a hole in the ground waiting for me. The world may go on just as it’s always done, and take everything from me -- loved ones, my land, everything; but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in that hole and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest." He went on a-rubbing his eyes.
"Forget your poor broken heart," says the head. "What are you throwing your poor broken heart at us for? We ain’t done nothing."
"No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, friends. I brought myself down -- yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should go through this -- perfectly right -- I don’t make any groans about it."
"Brought you down from where? Where was you brought down from?"
"Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes -- let it go by -- it’s not important. The secret of my birth -- "
"The secret of your birth? Do you mean to say -- "
"Good men," says the young man, very seriously, "I will tell it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. The truth is that I am a duke!"
Jim’s eyes pushed out when he heard that; and I think mine did, too. Then the head with no hair says: "No! you can’t mean it?"
"Yes. My father’s grandfather, oldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, ran off to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the clean air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the duke who died robbed his name and his wealth -- the baby that was the real duke was forgotten. That baby became my grandfather -- I am the true Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, sad, robbed of my wealth, hunted of men, hated by the cold world, poor, sick, with a broken heart, and brought down to being friends with runaways on a raft!"
Jim felt sorry for him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to make him happy, but he said it weren’t much use, he couldn’t be made happy; said if we was to receive him as a duke, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we should bend over when we spoke to him, and say "My Lord" -- and he would let us call him just "Bridgewater," which, he said, was more than just a name; and one of us should serve him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.
Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and served him, and says, "Will my lord have some of dis or some of dat?" and so on, and a body could see he was mighty happy with it.
But the old man got pretty quiet by and by -- didn’t have much to say, and didn’t look very comfortable over all that serving that was going on around the Duke. He seemed to be thinking about something. So, along in the afternoon, he says:
"Look here, Bilgewater," he says, "I’m a world full of sorry for you, but you ain’t the only person that’s had troubles like that."
"No?"
"No you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s been pulled down wrongly out of a high place."
"Oh my!"
"No, you ain’t the only person that’s had a secret of his birth." And truth is, he started to cry.
"Hold! What do you mean?"
"Bilgewater, can I trust you?" says the old man, in a soft crying way.
"To the death!" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, "That secret of your being: speak!"
"Bilgewater, I am the son of the king of France!"
You can be sure, Jim and me opened our eyes wide this time.
Then the duke says: "You are what?"
"Yes, my friend, it is too true -- your eyes is looking at this very second on the poor lost Dauphin, Louis the Seventeen, son of Louis the Sixteen and Mary Antoinette."
"You! At your age! No! You mean you’re his son; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."
"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brought these grey hairs on my face and has taken the hairs from my head. Yes, good men, you see before you, in dirty blue pants and sadness, the lost, forced out, walked-on, and hurting true King of France."
Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn’t know what to do, we was so sorry -- and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too. So we did like we done before with the duke, and tried to make him feel happy. But he said it weren’t no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; but he added that it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people acted toward him as they should, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "Your Majesty," and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t sit down when around him, until he asked them.
So Jim and me started majesty-ing him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up until he told us we might sit down. This done him a lot of good, and so he got happy and comfortable. But the duke kind of turned sour on him, and didn’t look at all happy with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly toward him, and said the duke’s father’s grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was well thought of by his father, and was free to come to the palace a lot.
But the duke stayed angry a good while, until by and by the king says: "Like as not we got to be together a very long time on this here raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use of your being sour? It’ll only make things rough for all of us. I ain’t to be blamed for not being born a duke, and you ain’t to be blamed for not being born a king -- so what’s the use to worry? Make the best of things the way you find ‘em, says I -- that’s my saying. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve found here -- more than enough food and an easy life -- come, give us your hand, duke, and let’s all be friends."
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the hard feelings and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a sad business to have any hard feelings on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be happy, and feel right and kind toward the others.
It didn’t take me long to learn that these men weren’t no kings or dukes at all, but just low-down empty talk and stories. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no arguments, and don’t get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn’t no problems with that, as long as it would keep peace in the family; and it weren’t no use to tell Jim, so I didn’t tell him. If I never learned nothing else out of pap, I learned that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.