The captain came to the head of the stairs and descended to the deck.  He was tall and lanky and mild of speech.  He said: 

“Now, Jack, what are you going to do with that knife?”

“I am waiting to cut the liver out of that Englishman.  Send him down, Captain, till I finish the job.”

“Yes, I see.  He has been peeling your neck pretty bad, ain’t he?  Powerful claws, I reckon.  Jack, you’ll be getting into trouble some day with your weepons.”  He took a small knife out of his pocket.  “Look here, Jack.  I’ve been going up and down the river more’n twenty years, and never carried a weepon bigg’n that, and never had a muss with nobody.  A man who draws his bowie sometimes gets shot.  Let’s look at your knife.”

He examined it closely, deciphered the brand, drew his thumb over the edge, and observed: 

“Why, blame me, if it ain’t one of them British bowies—­a Free-trade Brummagen.  I reckon you can’t carve anyone with a thing like this.”  He made a dig at the hand-rail with the point, and it actually curled up like the ring in a hog’s snout.  “You see, Jack, a knife like that is mean, unbecoming a gentleman, and a disgrace to a respectable boat.”  He pitched the British article into the river and went up into the saloon.

As Jack had not yet recovered his prestige, he went away, and returned with a dinner knife in one hand and a shingling hammer in the other.  He waited for his adversary until the sun was low and the deck passengers were preparing their evening meal.  Two of the Englishmen came along towards the stairs and ascended to the saloon.  Presently they began to descend with their mate in the middle.  Jack looked at them, and for some reason or other he did not want any more prestige.  He sauntered away along the guard deck, and remained in retirement during the rest of the voyage.  He was not, after all, a very desperate desperado.

During the next night our boat was racing with a rival craft, and one of her engines was damaged.  She had then to hop on one leg, as it were, as far as Peoria.  The Illinois river had here spread out into a broad lake; the bank was low, there were no buildings of any kind near the water; some of the passengers landed, and nobody came to offer them welcome.

I stood near an English immigrant who had just brought his luggage ashore, and was sitting on it with his wife and three children.  They looked around at the low land and wide water, and became full of misery.  The wife said: 

“What are we boun’ to do now, Samiul?  Wheer are me and the childer to go in this miserable lookin’ place?”

Samiul:  “I’m sure, Betsy, I don’t know.  I’ve nobbut hafe a dollar left of o’ my money.  They said Peoria was a good place for us to stop at, but I don’t see any signs o’ farmin’ about here, and if I go away to look for a job, where am I to put thee and the childer, and the luggage and the bedding?”