"If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here botherin' around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want."

     I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned.

     We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but it was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said. I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to the left-hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I says:

     "Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night."

     He says:

     "Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work."

     "I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid eyes on it."

     "It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know. Don't you blame yo'self 'bout it."

     When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy! So it was all up with Cairo.