James wakes under a tarp on the raft and realizes Huck has hidden him while two white men question the boy at close range. The men ask whether Huck has seen a runaway enslaved man, and Huck answers carefully, buying time while James stays motionless and listens.

When the men notice someone under the tarp, Huck claims it is his sick uncle and then says the man has smallpox. That lie immediately changes the encounter: the men recoil, stop probing the raft, warn Huck away, and one of them even gives Huck ten dollars before sending him off. Once they are safely away, James recognizes how narrow the escape was, and Huck marvels at the money he has gained.

Their conversation turns practical and urgent. Huck wonders what to do with the ten dollars, while James thinks instead about the larger cost of freedom, imagining what it might take to buy his wife and child. James concludes that they must get off the river now that he knows people are actively searching for him.

That night, when James and Huck go to retrieve the boat they had hidden, they discover that the canoe has been stolen. With no better option, they continue on the raft alone. The river is unusually crowded, and despite their efforts to stay clear of traffic, passing vessels batter the raft with wake and force.

The pressure of the river traffic finally breaks the raft apart. James sees Huck in the water, then is pulled under by a riverboat himself and briefly thinks he may drown. When he surfaces, disoriented and struggling only to stay alive and reach shore, James realizes that he has lost Huck.