I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! Look at me! I'm the man call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! . . . Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen, and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm about to turn myself loose!1 Thus sings Bob the keelboatman as reported without moral judgment by Huck Finn. Huck has swum from his cozy raft to eavesdrop on the big keelboat, to find out if he and Jim have drifted south of Cairo, downriver of Jim's chance at freedom. They have. But instead of information, Huck gets keelboatman talk and fighting. The Child of Calamity hollers back at Bob, and finally Little Davy threatens to thrash them both. After a violent and inconclusive grown-up brawl, these oversized boys, Bob and the Child, shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said had always respected each other, and was willing to let bygones be bygones. Then, as the necessity for a bout of hard work interrupted their normal play they washed their faces in the river; and just then there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the after sweeps. Later, back to normal drift, they sung 'Jolly Jolly raftsman's the life for me,' with a rousing chorus, and then got to talking about differences betwixt hogs and their different kinds of habits; and next about women and their different ways; . . . and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do, and how much he got, and so on. Each subject jostled the next in an unformed, credulous manner, as the men-boys slid on down the river (19). Bob the keelboatman and the Child of Calamity and Little Davy, sons of the muddy Mississippi, are objects of ridicule for Twain, but though primitive and