JAP'N JIM was lacin' up his shoes out in the main cabin by the big stove before I took my gittin'-up chew an' got on my pants an' shirt.

The second bell the cook was clangin' on the main deck down below was shakin' the frost off the willows on the bank 'longside the quarter-boat. After the racket died out Cap'n Jim started his mornin' vision report: "Dreamed of a preacher last night, Dave," he says. "He was standin' up in a skiff an' heavin' eggs at a big lummox of a catfish. What does you perdict that vision means?"

"That's a bad vision, Jim," I says, "an' a hard one to perdict. Wait till I git the book."

I dug the old dream-book out of the trunk in my stateroom. When I got back by the stove Cap'n Ed an' Cap'n Lafe was there with Cap'n Jim.

"Poverty-Prayer-Preacher. Preacher: if colored, denotes advance in position or inheritance of gold," I read. "Was he white or nigger?"

"White I think," says Cap'n Jim. "But he might have been some sickly yaller-lookin'."

"If white," the book says, "it portends a reduction of income or a successful business trip."

Cap'n Jim looked discouraged as a froze rabbit. "Where to would I be takin' a business trip, with the dang fleet laid up for the winter an' me cut to mate's pay till the spring work starts. I figger the shrinkin' income part o' that dream's all I'll git."

Cap'n Lafe hauled out the stone with a hole in it that he carried the time him an' the Dixie Queen sunk at Settlers Bend. "This here'll ward off the doom, Jim," he says, handin' the stone to Cap'n Jim. I give ol' Jim my rabbit-foot what has kept bad luck away from me many's the time,

an' we started in tryin' to recollect some more charms, but just then the flunky cast loose on the breakfast-bell an' we all drifted for'd an' below into the dinin'hall. The meal didn't last long, for them quarter-boats in the dredge fleet is cold in winter. After I drunk me a few cups of coffee, I joined Cap'n Jim, who had went out on the guards to size up the weather.

Outdoors she was colder'n blixen, with just a sparkle of frost in the air. In the main river, beyond the dead water in the cut-off where we was layin', the drift-ice was slickin' past at a six-mile clip. Around the fleet the ice was eight inches thick an' we was froze in, solid as a stone church.

Over on the island, where the farmers was cookin' breakfast, some streamers of smoke was risin' agin' the gray of the mornin' sky. "Ruther be here than one o' them land fellers what had to milk a fleet o' cows every mornin' afore he eats," I says to Cap'n Jim, tryin' to inflict him with his happy lot in life.

"If I could have my ruthers, Dave," he says, "I'd ruther be over on the hill at Chester with Mrs. Jim an' the two lads." He slung a look at the town across the river an' his eyes landed on his little white house agin' the hill, where his wife an' boys was. He stopped chewin' his finecut an' squinted at the house a long time.

"Eleven hunderd an' sixty-five an' some odd cents, ain't it-that mortgage?" I asks.

"Eleven fifty-five, an' some odd-I paid a extry ten last month," he said. "Before them orders come cuttin' me to mate I figgered I could git her down to nine hunderd by spring. Can't do it now, though-countin' grub an' wood an' clothes fer 'em. But last month I cut down on the chewin' twenty cents." "That's somethin'," I said.

We walked over to the office to git the

orders fer the day's work. Purty soon in come Cap'n Taylor, who was in charge of the fleet. He was a reformed civil engineer, forty years old an' fuller of worthless schemes than a inventor.

"Get a carpenter or two, Captain Stuart," he says to Cap'n Jim, "and repair the inside timbering of the barges at the end of the fleet." Cap'n Jim pulled down his old cap aroun' his ears an' started out. He had got a fine piece of work because the inside o' them barges is warm an' comfortable as soon as the sun hits the deck of 'em. I got a couple of painters an' didn't see Cap'n Jim till we gethered fer the mornin' coffee at the quarter-boat. While we was drinkin' it we seen the mail-tug headin' across the river from Chester. She landed at the point an' the pilot come walkin' up the ice to the fleet, luggin' the mail-sack. We waited till she was all distributed-not expectin' anythin', but hopin' that somebody might have wrote us, but exceptin' the letters from the St. Louis office fer Cap'n Taylor they wasn't nothin'.

As Cap'n Jim was startin' back to work, Cap'n Taylor called him in an' showed him one of the official letters. It wasn't no cheerin' news, fer when Cap'n Jim read it he begun shakin' his head an' lookin' downcasted.

He come over to me, walkin' fast enough to ketch up. "That danged vision was a white preacher, Dave," he says. "Cap just got another reducin' letter from St. Louis orderin' me an' two engineers cut to deck-hand's pay."

"That's terrible, Jim!" I says. "You can't live on no fifty a month, let alone git along!"

"I can't," he agrees, "but I has to. Because-well as you knows, Dave-I ain't no good fer nothin' else, now." I left him. They wasn't nothing I could think of then that'd help him any, so I started cussin' Congress an' the Mississippi River on general principles. Ol' Jim heard it an' it cheered him up a mite, fer just as he clum down the hatch of the barge he was workin' in he waved his hand at me, sprylike.

I walked over the fleet, spreadin' the news to the rest of the boys about Cap'n Jim. We knowed we had to do somethin' to rejoovenate his fadin' finances an' we

all started in tryin' to figger some way he could make a extry income. "Consider it over careful," I tells the boys, "an' tonight we'll have a council an' see what can be did."

When we went back to the quarter-boat fer dinner, we found out Cap'n Taylor had took the noon train from Chester fer St. Louis to hold a meetin' with Colonel McDonald, who was in charge of the whole St. Louis district, an' we decided to hold our council about Cap'n Jim immediate. I got rid of Cap'n Jim by sendin' him after some young eggs fer us, them in the reg'lar rations bein' a little too historical fer eatin' purposes, an' while he was over on the island the rest of us captains gathered in the main cabin.

"Boys," I says, "some of the arrers of rambunctious fortune has hit a brother inmate in the pants pocket where he keeps his cash. The fogs o' finance is settlin' thick around his fragile carcass, an' old Jim ain't goin' to make the riffle under his own steam. What's to be did?"

Nobody spoke fer a while, but finally Cap'n Ed Mitchell laid down his pipe. "As you boys knows," he says, "the wet swill out of the cook-house is more'n enough fer the two hogs what I raise every winter. The only reason the two I've got eats it all is because they is hogs. They is enough wet swill to fatten up six of the rattlinest razorbacks what ever et hick'ry-nuts. Six shoats is worth sixty dollars the day they tips down, aft, when h'isted by the ears. An' these here swill rights I donates title clear to Cap'n Jim."

"Hooray!" I yells. "That's ten dollars a month fer six months! An' in line with Cap'n Ed I hereby donates my claims to the dry swill what I fed my chickens before the varmints froze. That'll fetch her to eight hogs, easy."

The enthusiasm got infected. Everybody donated somethin'. Cap'n Porter declared Cap'n Jim a equal half-owner in the Bonanza Bunion Remedy that was invented from solderin' acid. She was a sure cure, but limited to the nigger country down-river, bein' as she generally took off a toe or two along with the bunion. Cap'n Tom bound himself to learn ol' Jim the weavin' of them yarn tidies with the okum trimmin' what can be sold in saloons fer men to take home after they

has spent their month's wages on liquor. And when the last man had spoke, an' just when we got a fine extry income all lashed up fer Cap'n Jim, in he come. We announced that his troubles was all over an' told him why, an' then the stubborn ol' cuss blew up. He declared that he'd rather go over the deep side than to feel that any of his comrades was called on to contribulate to his keep. Single an' all together, he refused everythin' we had done.

"When I comes to a riffle too shaller to float me, I'll try to drag across with my own lines, but as fer takin' a tow from any passin' craft, I guess you boys see how she lays." Cap'n Jim set down, mincin' his fine-cut fast with his remainin' front teeth, like a rabbit eatin' a cabbage-leaf. An' like he said we seen how she laid. We was stuck.

After we set there awhile, unnaturallike, figgerin' whether to give ol' Jim a good beatin' or not, Cap'n Ed got another idea. "Them monthly magazines," he says, "has got schemes in 'em that shows how money can be made. I got one that tells how Garfield come to be President after he got his canal-boat papers. Maybe they's somethin' in th' one I got, Jim, that you could foller an' keep this here job goin' at the same time." "Haul her out, Ed,” I says, “an' we'll have a look at her."

Cap'n Ed got the magazine an' started readin' the front pages out loud.

"BE A TRAFFIC MANAGER," reads Cap'n Ed, "AND EARN $25,000.00 PER YEAR."

"That's somethin' like!" I said. "How'd you like to be a traffic manager, Jim, an' manage traffic an'-an' everythin'?"

"The pay seems reasonable, but you boys knows no self-respectin' man kin foller such a sinful trade. I'm grieved at you suggestin' such a callin', Dave."

I was flabbergasted at the way he took it till I remembered the Sunday paper in red ink we had read, about the curse of the demon rum. "This ain't that kind of traffic, Jim," I says. "She's railroadin' an' such-in a fine office."

"I'm too old to learn railroadin'-turn over a leaf." Cap'n Jim was gettin' interested. We passed up astronomy an'

tree surgery. Taxidermy lured me some, but Cap'n Jim allowed it wasn't fair to drinkin' men what comes home late at night.

"Mushrooms is better than that. Listen to this here!" says Cap'n Ed. "MONEY IN MUSHROOMS! MAN IN MICHIGAN MAKES $500.00 THE FIRST WEEK! Jim, how'd you like to have a mushroom orchard?"

"Purty fair," says Cap'n Jim. "Purty fair at that figger. But where'd you raise 'em? Turn over a leaf."

"THERE IS CASH IN HIVES," reads Cap'n Ed.

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"Takes too long to learn the doctor business," objects Cap'n Jim.

"These here ain't them scratchin' kind these is beehives."

"Worse an' worse," says Cap'n Jim. "Bees is ornery, ungrateful, stingin' reptiles, an' far best let alone."

An' after we'd got clean through the book they was only three trades that looked handy-cartoonery, writin' movin'-picture shows, what didn't need no ideas at all exceptin' what was in the "Lubitz Complete Guide," an' raisin' mushrooms what needed some rich land an' a little mushroom seed to make fifty dollars a day.

"Mushrooms is your chance, Jim," says Cap'n Ed. "They is lots of rich land on both sides of the river."

"An' lots of rich frost scattered free on that same land," says Cap'n Jim.

The dinner-gong come clangin' in on our plannin', an' after the feedin' was finished we drifted back to our jobs. About three o'clock, when I was gittin' ready to drag over fer my afternoon coffee, I seen Cap'n Jim comin' my way down the fleet, runnin' an' wavin' his arms like a old turtle when he's turned over.

"I got it, Dave!" he yelled. “I got it!"

"What has you got?" I asks him, backin' away fer fear it was ketchin'.

"Mushrooms!" he puffs. "Mushrooms what you clear fifty dollars a day on!"

"Way you're actin', it 'pears more like hives or taxidermy you got," I says. "Where is these here mushrooms?".

He calmed down a little, but his eyes was gleamin' like a preacher savin' folks