8TORM SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 129 



thunder grew more and more distinct, the lightning 

 flashed more brightly, tind an occasional gust of wind, 

 accompanied by sleet, would penetrate between the logs 

 that composed our shelter. 



An old wood-chopper, who made one of our party, 

 feeling unusually comfortable, grew loquacious ; and he 

 detailed with great efi'ect the woeful scenes he had been 

 in at diflferent times of his life, the most awful of which 

 had been preceded, he said, by just such signs of weather 

 as were then exhibiting themselves. 



Among other adventures, he had been wrecked while 

 acting as a " hand " on a flat-boat navigating the Mis- 

 sissippi. 



He said he had come all the way from Pittsburgh, 

 at the head of the Ohio, to within two or three hundred 

 miles of Orleans, without meeting with any other serious 

 accident, than that of getting out of whiskey twice. 



But one night the captain of the flat-boat said that 

 the weather was " crafty," a thing he thought himself, as 

 it was most too quiet to last long. 



After detailing several other particulars, he finished 

 his story of being wrecked, as follows : " The quiet 

 weather I spoke of, was followed by a sudden change ; 

 th^ river grew as rough as an alligator's back ; thar was 

 the tallest kind of a noise overhead, and the fire flew 

 about up thar, like fur in a cat-fight. 



" ' We'll put in shore,' said the captain ; and we tried 

 to do it, that's sartaln : but tlu? way in which we always 



