When I looked round, _thar_ sot the old he, a lickin’ the blood from his breast! I’d shot him right through the breast, but sorter slantindickler, breakin’ his shoulder blade into a perfect smash. I walked up to him: “Howdy, panter? how do you do? how _is_ missis panter, and the little panters? how is your consarns in gineral? Did you ever hearn tell of the man they calls ‘Chunkey?’ born in Kaintuck and raised in Mississippi? death on a bar, and _smartly_ in a panter fight? If you diddent, look, for _I’m he_! I kills bars, whips panters in a fair fight; I walks the water, I out-bellars the thunder, and when I gets hot, the Mississippi hides itself! I—I—Oh, you thought you _had_ me, did you?—_drot you!_ But _you_ are a gone sucker, now. I’ll have your melt, if I never gits home, so—” “Look out, Capting! here’s the place! make the skift fast to that Cyprus log. Take care them oars, Abe! Spring out and oncupple the dogs, and take car they don’t knock them guns overboard. Now, Capting, we will have a deer movin’ afore you can say—Chunkey.” XXI. A BULLY BOAT, AND A BRAG CAPTAIN. A STORY OF STEAM-BOAT LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Does any one remember the ‘Caravan?’ She was what would now be considered a slow boat; _then_ (1827) she was regularly advertised as the “fast-running,” &c. Her regular trips from New Orleans to Natchez were usually made in from six to eight days; a trip made by her in five days was considered remarkable. A voyage from New Orleans to Vicksburg and back, including stoppages, generally entitled the officers and crew to a month’s wages. Whether the ‘Caravan’ ever achieved the feat of a voyage to the Falls (Louisville), I have never learned; if she did, she must have “had a time of it!” It was my fate to take passage in this boat. The captain was a good-natured, easy-going man, careful of the comfort of his passengers, and exceedingly fond of the _game of brag_. We had been out a little more than five days, and we were in hopes of seeing the bluffs of Natchez on the next day. Our wood was getting low, and night coming on. The pilot on duty _above_ (the other pilot held three aces at the time, and was just calling out the captain, who “went it strong” on three kings) sent down word that the mate had reported the stock of wood reduced to half a cord. The worthy captain excused himself to the pilot, whose watch was _below_, and the two passengers who made up the party, and hurried to the deck, where he soon discovered, by the landmarks, that we were about half a mile from a wood-yard, which he said was situated “right round yonder point.” “But,” muttered the captain, “I don’t much like to take wood of the yellow-faced old scoundrel who owns it; he always charges a quarter of a dollar more than any one else; however, there’s no other chance.”