1 I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.
2 We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois.
3 I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it.
4 The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.
5 I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I warn't disappointed.
6 We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards Illinois.
7 WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after.
8 I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.
9 We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us.
10 So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with.
11 If a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat.
12 When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there.
13 So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.