Hitch Diamond fell against the furnace door on his hands and knees. Figger Bush went crashing against the fragile side of the vessel, Skeeter Butts draped himself over the pilot-wheel with a loud squall, and the stool on which Vinegar Atts sat turned over, upsetting the dignified chaplain and landing him on his back, where he lay bellowing like a cow and waving his hands and feet toward the blue sky. Two watermelons and four baskets of grub rolled overboard followed by Vinegar’s precious stove-pipe hat, which bobbed up and down on the water like a diminutive battleship monitor. The little boat was tugging at the end of her rope like a lassoed mustang. “Stop her!” Hitch Diamond, the commodore, bellowed in a voice which could be heard two miles. “We fergot to untie de boat from dat stump!” Skeeter had already stopped the engine, and the negroes lost no time in releasing the line. Then started a pow-wow lasting an hour, about whose business it was to untie the boat. They finally made Figger Bush the goat, on the ground that his office of skipper was to skip around and do everything the others forgot. They abused him dreadfully for his neglect of duty, and Skeeter turned his back to the wheel several times while he delivered a remark which was calculated to reduce Skipper Bush’s self-esteem to a minimum. This was a very risky proceeding on the part of the pilot, especially when the boat was hugging the shore and navigating the slack water. Skeeter found it out when the bottom of the boat grated dully upon some soft substance underneath, and the boat paddled feebly, emitted a few discouraging puffs, and stopped. Then the worm turned, with the venom of a moccasin snake. “Dar now!” Figger Bush snarled. “Look whut you done went an’ did! Run us up on a mud bank!” [Illustration: Drawn by E. W. Kemble. When the boat stopped.] Skeeter reversed the machinery, pulled the whistle-cord, puffed and snorted, sloshed the Mississippi about some, developed a thousand snort-power from his engine, but not enough horse-power to back off. In his embarrassment he sweated enough water to raise the river and float his craft off the mud bank, if the water could have been applied at the right place. The other three negroes took a delight in informing him in raucous tones what a sublimated donkey they thought he was. Figger Bush developed an unusual flow of eloquence, and finally ended a superb climax by the proclamation: “All dem unkind words whut you said I wus for not untyin’ de boat--you is dem!” Then Skeeter had an inspiration. He handed the end of a rope to Hitch Diamond and Vinegar Atts, and remarked in an unusually sweet tone: “You two cullud pussons please git over on de shore an’ pull dis boat outen de mud!” “Naw!” the two men howled. “We ain’t gwine mess up our clothes!” “All right!” Skeeter remarked. “I’ll let de _Mud Hen_ set on her nest till she hatches out a rise in de river an’ floats off.”