The how and the whereto--two very important items in the resolve--were yet to be solved, and I was trotting along Cliff Street one day, when my eyes rested suddenly upon the great board, with large letters on it, "Office of the 'Picayune.'" I repeated the word over and over a couple of times, and then remembered it was the journal in which the reward for the Black Boatswain had been offered.
There was little enough, Heaven knows, in this to give me any interest in the paper; but the total isolation in which I found myself, without one to speak to or converse with, made me feel that even the "Picayune" was an acquaintance; and so I drew near the window where a considerable number of persons were reading the last number of the paper, which, in a laudable spirit of generosity, was exposed within the glass to public gaze.
Mingling with these, but not near enough to read for myself, I could hear the topics that were discussed, among which a row at the Congress, a duel with revolvers, a steam explosion on the Mississippi, and a few smart instances of Lynch-law figured.
"What 's that in the 'Yune print?" said a great raw-boned fellow, with a cigar like a small walking-cane in the corner of his mouth.
"It's a Texan go," said another; "sha'n't catch me at that trick."
"Well, I don't know," drawled out a sleek-haired man, with a very Yankee drawl; "I see Roarin' Peter, our judge up at New Small-pox, take a tarnation deal of booty out of that location."
"Where had he been?" asked the tall fellow.
"There _is_ a bit to be done about there," said the other, and, wrapping his mantle about him, lounged off.
"Guayugualla!" repeated I; and, retiring a little from the crowd, I took from my pocket the little newspaper paragraph of the negro, and read the name which had sounded so familiarly to my ears.
I endeavored once more to approach the window, but the crowd had already increased considerably; and I had nothing for it but to go in and buy the paper, which now had taken a strong hold upon me.
Cheap as was the paper, it cost me that day's dinner; and it was with a very great anxiety to test the value of my sacrifice that I hastened to the little miserable den which I had hired as my sleeping-place.