“That isn’t what I mean,” broke in Irv, with smiles rippling all over him, and running down even to his legs. “I mean, did anybody ever notice that you were,--oh, well, never mind that; but tell me, would you like a good big slice of cold corned beef before you go to sleep?” The negro answered in words. But his more emphatic answer was not one of words. He threw his arms around Irv in a giant’s embrace that almost crushed the youth’s bones. “There, that will do,” said Irv. “You have an engagement as a cotton compress or something of that sort, when you’re at home, I suppose. But now, if I let you have a good big slice of cold corned beef to-night, will you eat it just as I tell you, take a bite when I tell you and at no other time, and stop whenever I tell you? Will you promise?” “Shuah, sar, shuah,” eagerly responded the man. “But ‘sure’ isn’t enough,” replied Irv, half in amusement and half in seriousness, for he felt that his experiment was very risky, and he wanted to be able to regulate it, and stop it at any point. “Sure isn’t enough. Will you promise me on the isosceles triangle?” “Yes, boss.” “On the grand panjandrum?” “For shuah.” “And even on the parallelopipedon itself?” “Shuah, boss. I dunno what dem names mean, but for shuah I’ll do jes’ what you tells me to if you’ll lem’ me have de meat.” Irv was satisfied. He went below and prepared a sandwich. Returning, he allowed the man to eat it in bites, with long intervals between. It not only did no harm, it restored the man to such vitality that Phil decided to get some information out of him as to the flatboat’s whereabouts. He learned first that the rescued family sleeping below was that of a well-to-do planter; that the flood, coming as it did as the result of a crevasse, and therefore suddenly, had taken them completely by surprise, in the middle of the night, four or five days ago; that they had with difficulty escaped to the Indian mound in a field near by, and that they had not been able to take with them any food, or anything else except the clothes they had on. This accounted for the fact that the woman wore only a wrapper over her nightdress, that the man was nearly naked, and that the children were clad only in their thin little nightgowns. Then Phil learned that _The Last of the Flatboats_ was now in the Tallahatchie River, as he had guessed, not far from the point where it enters the Yazoo, at Greenwood. A little study of the map showed Phil that if this were true, he might expect to reach Vicksburg within four or five days, which in fact is what happened, not on the fourth or fifth, but on the sixth day thereafter, early in the morning.