Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind.  Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.  Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more—then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others.  So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what.  But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p'simmons.  We warn't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now.  I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening.  Take it all round, we lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides.  By and by says I, "Hel-_lo_, Jim, looky yonder!" It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock.  We was drifting straight down for her.  The lightning showed her very distinct.  She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come.

Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river.  I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there.  So I says:

"Le's land on her, Jim."

But Jim was dead against it at first.  He says:

"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack.  We's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says.  Like as not dey's a watchman on dat wrack."

"Watchman your grandmother," I says; "there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?"  Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try.  "And besides," I says, "we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom.  Seegars, I bet you—and cost five cents apiece, solid cash.  Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and _they_ don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it.  Stick a candle in your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging.  Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing?  Not for pie, he wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure—that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act.  And wouldn't he throw style into it?—wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing?  Why, you'd think it was Christopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come.  I wish Tom Sawyer _was_ here."