Raiza Mae Lachano

CHAPTER ONE HUCKLEBERRY FINN Scene: The Mississippi Valley Timet: Forty to fifty years ago You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody bur lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put I H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son. and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the rime, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I could’nt stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, die old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the cable you couldn’t go right to earing, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them,—that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long rime: so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people. Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and 1 must try to not do it anymore. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. 2 H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety; Miss Watson would say; “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and “Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry— set up straight;’’ and pretty soon she would say; “Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you cry to behave?’’ Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t cry for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good. Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and cried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound char a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest 3 H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider. I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn’t know. Well, after a long rime I heard the clock away off in the town go boom—boom—boom—twelve licks; and all still again—stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees—something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!’’ down there. That was good! Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me. 4 CHAPTER TWO We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouchcd down and laid still. Miss Watsons big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says: “Who dah?” He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes chat there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my hack, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I’ve noticed chat thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says: “Say, who is you? What is you? Dog my cats if I didn’t hear sum- f’n. Well, I know what I;s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it again." So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. 5 it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn’t know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more’n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and conic. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome. As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house, Tom said he slipped Jims hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. 6 H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; bur whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ‘bout witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something co it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hill-top we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the scars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn’t noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: “Now, we all start this band of robbers and call it Torn Sawyers Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.” HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family muse do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep rill he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but die rest was out of pirate books and robber-books, and every gang char was high-toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. I hen Ben Rogers says: “Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you going to do ‘bout him?” “Well, hain’t he got a Father?” says Tom Sawyer. ‘Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’tind him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tan yard, but he hadn’t been seen in these parts for a year or more.’ They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way; and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said: "Oh, she'll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in." Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N "Now,” says Ben Rogers, "what’s the line of business of this Gang?’’ "Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said. "But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or’ “Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; its burglary," says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We arc highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money." "Must we always kill the people?" "Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities chink different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.” “Ransomed? What’s that?” “I don t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course char’s what we've got to do.’’ “But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?” "Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?” “Oh, that’s all very fine to say Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them?—that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?" "Well, I don’t know. But perhaps if we keep them rill they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead." “Now, that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? Well keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too—eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.’’ "How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?” “A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here? ” “Because it ain’t in the books so—that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you?—that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn ’em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N “All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?" “Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home anymore." "Well, if that’s the way I’m agreed, but I don’t take no stock in it. Mighty soon well have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say/’ Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t want to be a robber any more. So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get our much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home. I dumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER THREE ¬¬ Well I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and day, and looked so sorry that 1 thought I would behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it wasn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It wasn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why and I couldn’t make it out no way. I set down one time hack in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself; if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can’t the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to myself there ain’t nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts..’ This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant—I must help other people and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N it—except for the other people; so at last 1 reckoned I wouldn’t worry about it anymore, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there wasn’t no help for him anymore. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was going to be any better off than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery. Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year and that was comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it wasn’t much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They rook him and buried him on the bank. But I wasn’t comfortable long, because I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drowned man don’t float on his back, but on his face. So I know, then, that this wasn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though 1 wished he wouldn’t. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging clown on bog-drivers and women in carts caking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs “ingots," and he called the turnips and scuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. Bur I couldn’t see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di’monds, and they didn’t have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it ,and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip-cart bur he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broom- sticks, and you might scour at them all you rotted, and then they wasn’t worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn’t believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn’t no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn’t no camels nor no elephants, it wasn’t anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He said if I wasn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said 1 was a numskull. “Why," said he, “a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church.’’ HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N “Well,’’ I says, “s’pose we got some genies co help us~ can’t we lick the other crowd then?” “How you going to get them?" “I don’t know. How do they get them? “Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don’t think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superintendent: over the head with it—or any other man." “Who makes them tear around so?” “Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they’ve got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor’s daughter from China for you to marry, they’ve got to do it—and they’ve got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they’ve got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it,you understand. ’’ “Well," says I, “I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the palace themselves ‘stead of fooling them away like that. And what’s more—if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for rhe rubbing of an old tin lamp." “How you calk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d have to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not.” 'What! and I as high as a trec and as big as a church? All right, then; I would come; but I lay I’d make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.’ “ Shucks, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, somehow—perfect saphead.” H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it was’nt no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of' Tom Sawyer’s lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER FOUR Well three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than hat f I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of se to the widow’s ways, too, and they wasn’t so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she wasn’t ashamed of me. One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of I as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!” The widow put in a good word for me, but that wasn’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N “There; you see it says ‘for a consideration.’ That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Here’s a dollar for you. Now you sign it.” So I signed it, and left. Miss Watson’s nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another rime, and if acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it wasn't no use; he said it wouldn’t talk. He said sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money. I told him I had an old stick counterfeit quarter that warn’t no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn’t pass nohow, even if the brass didn’t show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so char would tell on it every time. (I reckoned 1 wouldn’t say nothing about the dollar 1 got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn’t know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-hall would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn’t sec no brass, and it wouldn’t feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it. Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says: 'Yo’ ole father doan’ know yit what he’s a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he’ll go ‘way, en den again he spec he’ll stay. De hes’ way is to res’ HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey’s two angels how going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn’t one of them kind; so I never cried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out. I went down to the front garden and dumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen somebody’s tracks. I hey had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing around so. I couldn’t make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the cracks first. I didn’t notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, co keep off the devil. I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody; I was at Judge Thatcher’s as quick as I could get there. He said: “Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?" “No, sir,” I says; “is there some for me?” “Oh,yes, a half-yearly is in last night—over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it.” “No, sir,” I says, "I don’t want to spend it. I don’t want k at all— nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you—the six thousand and all. He looked surprised. He couldn’t seem to make it out. He says: “Why, what can you mean, my boy?” I says, “Don’t you ask me no questions about it, please. You’ll take it—won’t you?” He says: H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N 'Well, I’m puzzled. Is something the matter?’’ “Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing—then I won’t have to tell no lies." He studied a while, and then he says: “Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your property to me— not give it. That’s the correct idea. Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: erin' roun’ bout him. One uv ‘em is white en shiny, en t’ other one is black. De white one gets him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can’t tell yet which one gwyne to fetch him at de las’. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo’ life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to get hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to get sick; but every time you’s gwyne to get well again. Dey’s two gals flyin’ bout you in yo’ life. One uv em’s light en t’other one is dark. One is rich en t’other is po. You’s gwyne ro marry de po’ one fuse en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep ‘way film de water as much as you kin, en don’t run no resk, ‘kase it’s down in de bills dat you’s gwyne to get hung.” When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap—his own self! HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER FIVE I had shut the door to. Then I turned around, and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken—that is, after the first jolt, as you may say when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away after I see I wasn't scared of him worth bothering about. He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray: so was his long,mixed-up whiskers. I here wasn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; nor like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl—a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes—just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor—an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. I stood a-looking at him: he sec there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up; so he had dumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says: ’Starchy clothes—very. You think you’re a good deal of a big-bug, don't you?” “Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t,” I says. “Don’t you give me none o’ your lip,” says he. ' You’ve put on con- H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N siderable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You’re educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you’re better’n your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t? I’ll take it out of you. Who told you might meddle with such hifalutin foolishness, hey?—who told you could?” "The widow. She told me." “The widow, hey?—and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain’t none of her business?" "Nobody never told her." “Well, I’ll learn her how to meddle. And looky here—you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better n what HE is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn’t write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn’t before they died. I can’t; and here you re a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it—you hear? Say, lemme hear you read.” I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I’d read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says: “It’s so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won’t have it. I’ll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I’ll ran you good. First you know you’ll get religion, too. I never see such a son. He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: “What’s this?" "It’s something they give me for learning my lessons good." He tore it up, and says: “I’ll give you something better—I'll give you a cowhide. He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says: "Ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a look’n’-glass: and a piece of carpet on the floor—and your own HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I her I’ll take some o’ these frills out ๐’ you before I’m done with you. Why, there ain’t no end to your airs—they say you’re rich. Hey?—how’s that?” “They lie—that’s how.” “ Looky here—mind how you talk to me; I’m a-standing about all I can stand now—so don’t gimme no sass. I’ve been in town two days, and I hain't heard nothing but about you bein’ rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That’s why I come. You get me that money tomorrow—I want it.” “I hain’t got no money." “It’s a lie. Judge Thatchers got it. You get it. I want it." "I hain’t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell you the same.” "Allright. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him pungle, too, or I’ll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it." ‘I hain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to—” “It don’t make no difference what you want it for—you just shell it out." He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn’t had a drink all day; When he had got our on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn’t drop that. Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge I hatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he’d make the law force him. The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts musn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he’d druther not H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. That pleased the old man till he couldn’t rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn’t raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him. When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he’d been a fool, and fooled away his life; bur now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn’t be ashamed of and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he’d been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy; and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: “Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and’ll die before he’ll go back. You mark them words— don’t forget I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it— don’t be afeard.” HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge— made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some rime he got powerful thirsty and dumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and dumb hack again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER SIX Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didn’t want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business—appeared like they warn’t ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I 'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited—this kind of thing was right in his line. He got to hanging around the widow’s too much and so she told him at last that if he didn’t quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn’t he mad? He said he would show who was HuckFinn’s boss. 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. He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stolen, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by and by; and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; hut pap drove him off with the gun, and it wasn’t long after chat till I was used to being where I was, and liked it—all but the cowhide part. It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widows, where you had to wash, and cat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. But by and by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn’t ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had cried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There wasn’t a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty carefull not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well. I was most all the rime at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. Bur this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N the big bottom log our—big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap’s gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. Pap warn't in a good humor—so he was his natural self. He said he was down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Tatcher knowed how to do it and he said people allowed there’d be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow’s anymore and be so cramped up and civilized, as they called it. Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. He said he would like to see watch out, and if they cried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn’t find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till he got that chance. The old man made me go to die skiff and fetch the things he had got. I here was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers tor wadding, besides some cow. I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn’t stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn’t ever find me anymore. I HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N judged I would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded. I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got son of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam—he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the gov-ment his time he says: "Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a-standing ready to rake a man’s son away from him— a man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That ain't all. nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property; Here’s what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up’ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ‘em heard me, and can cell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come- a-near it again. Them’s the very words. I says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—hue the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I——such a hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could get my rights. "Oh. Yes, this is a wonderful gov men t, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see. too, and the shiniest hat: and there ain't a man in that town that’s got as H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I wasn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where rhey’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote again. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me— I’ll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger——why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him our o’ the way I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. I here, now—that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—’’ Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub sonic, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the rub a ratling kick. But it wasn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. After supper pap cook the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy; He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long rime. At last I got so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek—but I couldn’t see no snakes. He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering Take him off! take him off! he’s biting me on the neck!" I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low: “Tramp —tramp—tramp; that’s the dead; tramp—tramp—tramp; they’re coming after me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me-don’t! hands off—they’re cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!" then he went down on all fours and crawled off begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and cold him I was only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone: but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself! Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would sec who was who. So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair and dumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER SEVEN Git up! What you ‘bout?” I opened my eyes and looked around, crying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour—and sick, too. He says: "What you doin’ with this gun?” I judged he didn’t know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says: "Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him." "Why didn't you roust me out?” "Well, I tried to, but I couldn’t: I couldn't budge you.” “Well, all right. Don’t stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there’s a fish on the lines for breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute." He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts— sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill. I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t’other one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected the red be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they’d raise up and laugh at him. But it wasn’t so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure enough, and I dumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this—she’s worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea: I judged I’d hide her good, and then, ‘stead of taking to the woods when I run off; I’d go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place For good, and not have such a rough rime tramping on foot. It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn’t seen anything. When he got along I was hard at it taking up a “trot" line. He abused me a little for being so slow; bur I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home. While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out. I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck t๐ get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn’t see no way for a while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says: "Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you hear? That man wasn’t here for no good. I’d shot him. Next time you roust me out, you hear?' Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so nobody won’t chink of following me. About twelve o’clock we turned out and went along up the bank. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by along comes part of a log raft—nine logs fast together. We went out with the skiff and rowed it ashore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff; but that wasn’t pap’s style. Nine logs was enough for one time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. I judged he wouldn’t come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log again. Before he was t’other side of the river I was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding: I took the bucker and gourd: I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I cook fish-lines and matches and other things—everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done. I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and die sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place and didn’t quite touch ground. If you stood four or five foot away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; and besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it wasn’t likely anybody would go fooling around there. It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn’t left a track. I followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. I shot this fellow and rook him into camp. I cook the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked ii considerable a-doing it. I fetched die pig in, and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleed: I say ground because it was ground—hard packed, and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it—all I could drag—and I started it from the pig, and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that. Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn’t drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there wasn’t no knives and forks on the place—pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake chat was five mile wide and full of rushes—and ducks too, you might say in the season. There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don’t know where, but it didn't go to the river. I he meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap’s whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn’t leak no more, and took it and my saw to die canoe again. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the Moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I say’s to myself they’ll follow the track of that sack full of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me. And they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jacksons Island's the place. I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. I The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late. You know what I mean—I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and stare when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it’s a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was—a skiff away across the water. I couldn’t tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there wasn’t but one man in it. Think’s I, maybe it’s pap, though I wasn’t expecting him. He dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it was pap, sure enough—and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. I didn’t lose no time. I he next minute I was a-spinning downstream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would he passing the ferry H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N landing, and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; nor a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too- very word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the shore nights now. T ‘other one said this wasn’t one of the short ones, he reckoned—and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and cold him, and laughed, but he did nor laugh; he ripped OUT something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he ‘lowed to tell it to his old woman——she would think it was pretty good; but he said that wasn’t nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o’clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn’t wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn’t make out the words anymore; but I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off; I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson’s Island, about two mile and a half downstream, heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. There wasn’t any signs of the bar at the head—it was all under water now. It didn’t take me long to get there. 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. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in: and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and die black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile upstream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern oars, there! heave her head to stab-board!" I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER EIGHT The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o’clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. I was powerful lazy and comfortable— didn’t want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep sound of “boom!" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up—about abreast the ferry. And there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. “Boom!" I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboats side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. I was pretty hungry, but it wasn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning—so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to cat. Well, then I happened to think how they HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drowned carcass and stop there. So, says I, I’ll keep a lookout, and if any of them’s floating around after me I’ll give them a show. I changed to die Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I wasn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore—I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out die lit de dab of quick-silver, and see my teeth in. It was “baker’s bread”—what the qualify ear; none of your low-down corn-pone. I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. So there ain’t no doubt hut there is something in that thing—that is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don’t work for me, and I reckon it don’t work for only just the right kind. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I’d have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. When she'd got pretty well along down towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N “Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he’s washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water’s edge. I hope so, anyway.’’ I didn’t hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see them first-rare, but they couldn’t see me. Then the captain sung out: "Stand away!' and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I judged I was gone. If they’d a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd a got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I wasn’t hurt, thanks to goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming now and then, further and further off and by and by, after an hour, I didn’t hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. But they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot of the island and suited up the channel on the Missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to char side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn’t get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied: but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and see on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can’t stay so, you soon get over it. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N And so for three days and nights. No difference—just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by, I judged. Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I wasn’t far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn’t shot nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half too. When I got to camp I wasn't feeling very brash, there wasn’t much sand in my craw; but I says, this ain’t no time to be fooling around. So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year’s camp, and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn’t see nothing, I didn't hear nothing—I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well, I couldn’t stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and dark H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank—about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself horses coming; and next I hear people’s voices. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say: “We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. Let’s look around." I didn’t wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t, somehow, for thinking. And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn’t do me no good. By and by I say’s to myself I can’t live this way; I’m a-going to find out who it is that’s here on the island with me; I’ll find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore: then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn’t seem to find the place. But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady, it was getting gray daylight now. Pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss Watsons Jim! 1 bet I was glad to see him. I says: "Hello, Jim!" and skipped out. He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: “Don’t hurt me—don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. You go en git in de river again, whah you b’longs, en doan do nuffn ro Ole Jim, ar uz awluz yo’ fren.” Well, I wasn't long making him understand I wasn't dead. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I wasn’t lonesome now. I told him I wasn't afraid of him telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. Then I says: It’s good daylight. Le’s get breakfast. Make up your camp fire good.” “What’s de use er makin’ up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? But you got a gun, hain’t you? Den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries.’ “Strawberries and such truck,” I says. “Is chat what you live on? ’ "I couldn’ git nuffn else, he says. “Why; how long you been on the island, Jim?” “I come heah de night after you’s killed.” “What, all that time?” “Yes—indeedy." “And ain’t you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" “No, sah—nuffn else." ‘‘Well, you must be most starved, ain’t you?" “I rcck’n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de islan?” “Since the night I got killed.” “No! W’y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a gun. Dats good. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire." So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hoc. Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by Jim says: “But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat ‘uz killed in dat shanty ef it wasn’t you?” Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says: “How do you come to be here, Jim, and how’d you get here?” He looked pretty uneasy; and didn’t say nothing for a minute. Then he says: “Maybe I better not tell.” “Why. Jim?” “Well, dey’s reasons. But you wouldn’t tell on me ef I uz to tell you, would you, Huck?” “Blamed if I would, Jim.” “Well, I b’lieve you, Huck. I—1 run off”. “Jim!” “But mind, you said you wouldn’t tell—you know you said you wouldn’t tell, Huck.” “Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I’ll stick to it. Honest Injun, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t a-going to cell, and I ain’t a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le’s know all about it.” “Well, you see, it ‘uz dis way Ole missus— dat’s Miss Watson—she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn’ sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun’ de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do’ pooty late, en de do’ warsn’t quite shet, en I hear old HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down co Orleans, but she didn want to, but she could git eight hund’d dollars For me, en it ‘uz sich a hig stack o' money she couldn’ resis’. De widder she try to git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res’. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you. “ I tuck out en shin down de hill, en ‘spec to steal a skift ‘long de sho’ som’ers ‘bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go ‘way. Well. I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun’ all de time. ‘Long bout six in de mawnin skifts begin to go by; en ‘bout eight er nine every skift dat went ‘long wuz talkin' bout how yo’ pap come over to de town en say you’s killed. Dese las’ skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place. Sometimes dey’d pull up at de sho’ en take a res’ b'fo’ dcy started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all ‘bout de killin’. I ‘uz powerful sorry you’s killed. Huck, but I ain’t no mo’ now. “I laid dah under de shavin’s all day. I uz hungry, but I warn't afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin to start to de camp-meet’n’ right arter breakfas' cn be gone all day, en dey knows I goes off wid de cattle ‘bout daylight, so dey wouldn' ‘spec to see me roun de place, en so dey wouldn’ miss me tell artcr dark in de evenin’. De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kasc deyd shin out en take holiday soon as de ole folks ‘uz out’n de way. “Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went ‘bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. I’d made up my mine bout’ what I’s agwyne to do. You see, ef I kep’ on tryin’ to git away afoot, de dogs ‘ud track me; cf I stole a skift to cross over, dey’d miss dat skift, you see, en dey’d know bout’ whah I’d lan’ on de yuther side, en whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I’s arter; it doan’ make no track. “I see a light a-comin’ roun’ de p’int bymeby, so I wade’ in en shove' a log ahead o’ me en swum more’n half way acrost de river, en got in mongst de drift-wood, en kep’ my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current veil de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck a-holt. It clouded up en ‘uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb up en laid down on de planks. De men ‘uz all “way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz a-risin’, en dey wuz a good current; so I reck'nd at by fo’ H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N in de mawnin’ I’d be twenty-five mile down de river, en den I’d slip in jis b'fo’ daylight en swim asho’, en cake ro de woods on de Illinois side. “But I didn’ have no luck. When we ‘uz mos’ down to de head er de islan’ a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. I see it warn’t no use fer to wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan’. Well, I had a notion I could lan mos anywhers, but I couldn’t—bank too bluff. I uz mos’ to de foot er de islan b’fo’ I into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo’, long as dey move de lantern roun so. I had my pipe en a plug en dog-leg, en some matches in my cap, en dey warn’t wet, so I uz all right.” “And so you ain’t had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn’t you get mud-turkles?" “How you gwyne to git m? You can’t slip up on um en grab um; en how’s a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En I warn’t gwyne to show myself on de bank in de daytime.” “Well, thats so. You’ve had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. Did you hear ’em shooting the cannon?’’ “Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah— watched um thoo de bushes.” Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when young chickens Hew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn’t let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. And Jim said you mustn’t count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; bur I didn’t believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn’t sting me. I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if there warn’t any good-luck signs. He says: “Mighty few—an’ dey ain’t no use to a body. What you want to know when good luck’s a-comin' for? Want to keep it off?' And he said: “Ef you’s got hairy arms en a hairy breas’, it’s a sign dat you's agwyne to be rich. Well, dey’s some use in a sign like dat, ‘kase it’s so fur ahead. You see, maybe you’s got to be po’ a long time fust, en so you might git discourage’ en kill yo’sef you didn’ know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby." “Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?” “Whats de use to at dat question? Don't you see I has?" “Well, are you rich?” “No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. Wunst I had foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n’, en got busted out." “What did you speculate in, Jim?" “Well, fust I tackled stock.” “What kind of stock?” “ Why, live stock—cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I ain’ gwyne to resk no mo’ money in stock. De cow up n died on my hans." “So you lost the Ten dollars." “No, I didn’t lose it all. I on’y los’ ‘bout nine of it. I sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents.” “You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate anymore?” “Yes. You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo’ dollars mo’ at de en er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn’t have much. I wuz de on’y one dat had much. So I stuck out for mo’ dan fo’ dollars, en I said 'f I didn’ git it I’d start a bank myself. Well, o’ course dat nigger want’ to keep me out en de business, bekase he says dey warn’t business ‘nough for two banks, so he say I could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en er de year. “So I done it. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Den I reck'nd I’d inves’ de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin’. Dey wuz a nigger name’ Bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn’ know it; en I bought it off'n him en cold him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en’ er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en next day de one-laigged nigger say de bank’s busted. So dey didn’ none uv us git no money.” “What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?” “Well, I 'uz gwvne to spen it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' Balum—Balum's Ass dcy call him for short; he’s one er dan chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I warn't lucky. De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po’ len to de Lord, en boun’ to git his money back a hund’d times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po, en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." “Well, what did come of it, Jim?” “Nuffh never come of it. I couldn’ manage to k’leck dat money no way; en Balum he couldn’. I ain’ gwyne to len no mo’ money ‘dout I see de security. Boun’ to git yo' money back a hund’d times, de preacher says! Ef I could git de ten cents back, I’d call it squah, en be glad er de chanst.” “Well, it’s all right anyway, Jim, long as you’re going to be rich again some time or other.’’ "Yes; en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef en I’s wuch eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn’ want no mo.’’ HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER NİNE I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and dumb 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. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there h anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet? So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner. We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the hack of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was righ about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-web by; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest—.fit! it was as bright as glory, and you’d have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down die sky towards the under -side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs— where its long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. “Jim, this is nice," I says. “I wouldn’t want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread." "Well, you wouldn’t been here if it hadn't a ben for Jim. You’d a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en git tn’ mos’ drownded, too; dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it’s gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile. The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across—a half a mile—because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and our amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to hack away and go some other way; Well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles—they would slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of them. We could had pets enough if we'd wanted them. One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft—nice pine planks, it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches—a solid, level floor. We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go; we didn’t show ourselves in daylight. Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard— clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we looked in at the window, could make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says: “Hello, you!” But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says: “De man ain't asleep—he’s dead. You hold still—I'll go en see." He went, and bent down and looked, and says: "It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face—it’s too gashly.” H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn’t done it; I didn’t want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old tiny calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women’s underclothes hanging again to the wall, and some men’s clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe—it might come good. There was a boy’s old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a look the boule, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with die hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn‘t nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn’t fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, g’and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn’t have no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn’t find the other one, chough we hunted all around. And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn’t no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER TEN After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. We rummaged the clothes we’d got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in die lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they’d a knowed the money was there they wouldn’t a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, too; but em didn’t want to talk about that. I says: “Now you think it’s bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. Well, here’s your bad luck! We've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim.' "Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It’s a-comin’. Mind I tell you, it’s a-comin." It did come. too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the foot of Jim’s blanket, H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N ever so natural, thinking there’d be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light the snakes mate was there, and bit him. He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap’s whisky-jug and begun to pour it down. He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. I hat all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snakes head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. He said that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I wasn’t going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it. Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I'd drutcher been bit with a snake than pap’s whisky. Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. He said the drutcher see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I’ve always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say: and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool. Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to hair one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. We couldn’t handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We just sit there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach and a ‘round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatcher, and there was a spool in it. Jim said he’d had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn’t ever seen a bigger one. He would been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat’s as white as snow and makes a good fry. Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn’t walk like a girl; and he said I muse quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better. I starred up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N and the drift of the current fetched me in ac the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty year’s old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table. I didn’t know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn’t stare a face in that town that I didn’t know. Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people might know my voice and find me out. But if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn’t forget I was a girl. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER ELEVEN Come in,’’ says the woman, and I did. She says: “ Take a cheer." I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: “What might your name be?" “Sarah Williams.” “Where bouts do you live? In this neighborhood? “No’m. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I’ve walked all the way and I'm all tired out.” "Hungry, too, I reckon. I’ll find you something." "No’m, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at a farm; so I aint hungry no more. It’s what makes me so late. My mother’s down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I hain’t ever been here before. Do you know him?” "No; but I done know everybody yet. I haven’t lived here quite two weeks, it’s a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here all night, lake off your bonnet." “No," I says; “I’ll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain’t afeared of the dark.” She said she wouldn’t let me go by myself but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in a hour and a half and she’d send him along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better oft they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone—and so on and so on, till I was afeard H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six Thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says: "Who done it? We’ve heard considerable about these goings on down in Hookerville, but we don't know who ‘twas that killed Huck Finn.” “Well, I reckon there’s a right smart chance of people HERE that’d like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself " “No—is that so?” "Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim." “Why he—" I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I had put in at all: “ The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a reward out for him—three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for old Finn, too—two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with ‘em on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done. 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. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain’t come back since, and they ain’t looking for him back till this thing blows over a link, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he’d get Huck’s money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N People do say he wasn’t any too good to do it. Oh, he’s sly, I reckon. If he don't come back for a year he’ll be all right. You can’t prove anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he’ll walk in Huck’s money as easy as nothing.’ “Yes, I reckon so, ‘m. I don’t see nothing in the way of it. Has everybody guit thinking the nigger done it?’ “Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they’ll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him.” “Why, are they after him yet?” "Well, you’re innocent, ain’t you! Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far from here. I’m one of them—but I hain't talked it around. A few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call Jackson’s Island. Don’t anybody live there? says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn’t say any more, but I done some thinking. I was pretty near certain I’d seen smoke over there, about the head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to myself like as nor that nigger’s hiding over there: anyway, says I, it’s worth the trouble to give the place a hunt, i hain’t seen any smoke sence, so I reckon maybe he’s gone, if it was him; but husband’s going over to see—him and another man. He was gone up the river; but he got back today; and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago.” I had got so uneasy I couldn’t sit still. I had to do something with my hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it .My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a link. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested—and I was, too—and says: “Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get it. Is your husband going over there tonight?” “Oh, yes. He went up-town with the man I was telling you of to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They’ll go over after midnight.” “Couldn’t they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N ‘‘Yes. And couldn’t the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he’s got one.” “I didn’t think of that.” The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn’t feel a bit comfortable. Pretty soon she says" "What did you say your name was, honey?” “M—Mary Williams.” Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't look up—seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered, and was a feared maybee I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now she says: “Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?" “Oh, yes’m, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah’s my first name. Some calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary.” “Oh, that’s the way of it?” “Yes’m.” I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. I couldn’t look up yet. Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right about the rats. You’d see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn’t give her no peace. She showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generly, but she’d wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn’t know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said “Ouch!” it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn’t let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose I let drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he’d a been a tolerable sick rat. She said that was first-rate, and HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N she reckoned I would hive the next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking about her and her husband’s matters. But she broke off to say: “Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap, handy.” So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute. Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very pleasant, and says: “Come, now, what’s your real name?’ “Wh—what, mum?” “What’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?—or what is it?" I reckon I shook like a leaf and I didn't know hardly what to do. But I says: “Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I’m in the way here, I’ll—" "No, you won’t. Set down and stay where you are. I ain’t going to hurt you, and I ain’t going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I’ll keep it; and, what’s more, I’ll help you. So’II my old man if you want him to. You see, you’re a runaway prentice, that’s all. It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it. You’ve been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, child, I wouldn’t tcll on you. Tell me all about it now, that’s a good boy;’’ So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn’t go back on her promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer; he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and stole some of his daughter’s old clothes and cleared out, and I had been three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way, and I had a plenty. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I said I believed my uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen. “Goshen, child? This ain’t Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen’s ten mile further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?” "Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen.” “He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong." "Well he did act like he was drunk, but it ain’t no matter now. I got to be moving along. I’ll fetch Goshen before daylight." “Hold on a minute. I’ll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it.” So she put me up a snack, and says: “Say, when a cows laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer up prompt now— don’t stop to study over it. Which end gets up first?” “The hind end, mum." ..Well, then, a horse?” “The for’rard end, mum.” “Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?” “North side.” “ If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?” “The whole fifteen, mum.” “ Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. Whats your real name, now?” “George Peters, mum.” “Well, try to remember it, George. Don’t forget and tell me it’s Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it’s George Elexander when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it; that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t’other way; HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I’ll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road all the way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river road’s a rocky one, and your feet’ll be in a condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon.” I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I jumped in, and was off in a hurry. I went up-stream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the sun-bonnet, for I didn’t want no blinders on then. When I was about the middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the sound come faint over the water but clear—eleven. When I struck the head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but I shoved right into the limber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half below, as hard as H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I could go. I landed, and stopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on the ground. I roused him out and says: “Git up and hump yourself Jim! There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!” Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn’t show a candle outside after that. I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain’t good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still—never saying, a word. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER TWELVE It must a been close on to one o’clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boar was to conic 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. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things, it wasn’t good judgment to put everything on the raft. If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn’t no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could. When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a tow head in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatcher, and covered up the raft with them so she locked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. 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. We laid there all day; and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was co start after us herself she wouldn’t set down and watch a camp fire—no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn’t she tell her husband to fetch a dog? H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn’t be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the village—no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn’t get us as long as they didn't. When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra stirring-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. We fixed up a shot forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steam hoar coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a 'crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn’t always run the channel, but hunted easy water. This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it wasn’t often chat we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next. Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in Sr. Louis, but I never believed it till I see what wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock chat still night. There wasn’t a sound there; everybody was asleep. Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that wasn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that docs, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself bur that is what he used to say, anyway. Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a pumpkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it wasn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; bur the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more—then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons. We warn’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three months yet. We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn’t go to bed early enough in the evening. take it all round, we lived pretty high. The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, "Hel- LO, Jim, looky yonder!"' It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come. Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious- like, I felt just the way any other boy would a fell when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. So I says: “Les land on her, Jim." But Jim was dead against it at first. He says: “I doan want to go fool’n ‘long er no wrack. We’s doin’ blame well, en well better let blame well alone, as de good book says. Like as nor dey’s a watchman on dat wrack.” “Watchman your grandmother,’' I says; 'there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody’s going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when its likely to break up and wash oft down the river any minute?” Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn’t try. “And besides,” I says, “we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. Seegars, I bet you—and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they done care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket; I can’t rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Nor for pie, he wouldn't. He’d call it an adventure——that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it?—wouldn't he spread himself nor nothing? Why, you’d think it was Christopher C’lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.” HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn’t calk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and made last there. The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn’t see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb on to it: and the next step fetched us in front of the captains door, which was open, and by Jimminy; away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in yonder! Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. I says, all right, and was going to scan for the raft; but just then I heard a voice wail out and say: “Oh, please don’t, boys; I swear I won’t ever tell!' Another voice said, prettty loud: “ It’s a lie, Jim Turner. You’ve acted this way before. You always want more’n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you’ve swore ‘t if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it jest one time too many. 'You’re the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country.” By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with curiosity; and I says to myself Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now, and so I won’t either; I’m a-going to see what’s going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till there warn’t but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept pointing the pistol at the man’s head on the floor, and saying: "I’d like to! And I orter, too—a mean skunk!” H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, ‘‘Oh,please don’t. Bill; I hain’t ever goin’ to tell.” And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say: “’Deed you ain’t! You never said no truer thing ‘n that, you bet you." And once he said: “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn’t got the best of him and tied him he’d a killed us both. And what for? Just for noth’n. Just because we stood out on our rights- that’s what for. But I lay you ain’t a-goin’ to threaten nobody anymore., Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill.” Bill says: "I don't want to, Jake Packard. I’m for killin' him—and didn't he kill old Harfield just the same way and don’t he deserve it?” “But I done want him killed, and I’ve got my reasons for it." "Bless yo heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forgit you long’s I live!” says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill to come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat slanted so that I couldn’t make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom, he says: "Here—come in here.” And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they’d been having. I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn’t made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body couldn’t breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N "He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to him now it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we’ve served him. Shore’s you’re born, he’ll turn State’s evidence; now you hear me. I’m for putting him out of his troubles.’’ “So’m I,” says Packard, very quiet. “Blame it, I’d sorter begun to think you wasn't. Well, then, that’s all right. Lc’s go and do it.” “Hold on a minute; I hain’t had my say yit. You listen to me. Shooting’s good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s got to be done. But what I say is this: it ain’t good sense to go court'n around after a halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that’s just as good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. Ain’t that so?” “You bet it is. But how you goin to manage it this time?" “Well, my idea is this: well rustle around and gather up whatever pickins we’ve overlooked in the stare-rooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self I reckon that’s a considerible sight better n killin' of him. I'm unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git around it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain't I right?” “Yes, I reck'n you are. But s’pose she don’t break up and wash off?” “Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can’t we?" “All right, then; come along." So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold swear, and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “Jim !” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and I says: H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N “Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their hoar and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the wreck there’s one of ‘em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat we can put all of em in a bad fix—for the sheriff .I’ll get em. Quick—hurry! I’ll hunt the lab board side, you hunt the scabboard. You start at the raft, and—” “Oh, my lordy, lordy! Raf ? Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done broke loose en gone I—n here we is! HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER THIRTEEN Well I catched my breach and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it wasn’t no time to be sentimentering. We'd got to find that boat now—had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too—seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any further—so scared he hadn’t hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the skift sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "Heave that blame lantern out o’ sight, Bill!’’ He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. It was Packard. Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice: “All ready—shove off!” H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N I couldn’t hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says: “Hold on—‘d you go through him?" “No. Didn’t you?” “No. So he’s got his share o’ the cash yet.” "Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money;” “Say, won't he suspicion what were up to?" "Maybe he won’t. But we got to have it anyway. Come along." So they got out and went in. The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her lip, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. Then Jim manned the oars, and we took our after our raft. Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim: “The first light we see well land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it’s a good hiding-place for you and the skift and then I 'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N The rain poured down, and never a light showed; everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go for it. The skiff was halt full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I cold Jim to floact along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more showed—up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jack- staff of a double-hull ferryboart. I skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: ‘Hello, what’s up? Don’t cry, bub. What’s the trouble?” I says: “Pap, and. mam, and sis, and—" Then I broke down. He says: “Oh, dang it now, don’t take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and this ‘n’ll come out all right. What’s the matter with em?” “They're—they’re—are you the watchman of the boat?” “Yes, he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. “I’m the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and sometimes I’m the freight and passengers. I ain’t as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can’t be so blame generous and good to ToM, Dick, and H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but I‘ve told him a many a time I wouldn't trade places with him; for, says I, a sailor’s life's the life for me, and I’m derned if I'd live two mile out o’ town, where there ain’t nothing ever goin’ on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I—” I broke in and says: “They’re in an awful peck of trouble, and—” “Who is?” “ Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker and if you’d take your ferryboat and go up there—” “Up where? Where are they?" “On the wreck.” “What wreck?” .‘Why, there ain't but one.” “What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?" “Good land! what are they doin there for gracious sakes?” “Well, they didn’t go there a-purpose.” “I bet they didn’t!great goodness, there ain’t no chance for 'em if they done git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape?*’ “Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town—’’ "Yes, Booth’s Landing—go on.” "She was a-visiting there are Booths Landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay all night at her friend’s house. Miss What-you-may-call-her. I disremember her name—and they lose their stirring-oar, and swung around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn’t notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so we saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple—and oh, he was the best cretur!—I most wish ‘t it had been me, I do.” ： HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N "My George! It’s the beatenest thing I ever struck. And then what did you all do?” "Well, we hollered and took on, but it’s so wide there we couldn't make nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and Miss Hooker she said if I didn’t strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he’d fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, ‘What, in such a night and such a current? There ain’t no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.’Now if you’ll go and—’’ “By Jackson, I’d like to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will; but who in the dingnation’s a-going’ to pay for it? Do you reckon your Pap?— "Why that’s all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, particular, that her uncle Hornback—” “ Great guns! is he her uncle? Looky here, you break for that light over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell ’em to dart you out to Jim Hornback’s, and he’ll foot the bill. And don’t you fool around any, because he’ll want to know the news, fell him I’ll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself now; I’m a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer.” I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some wood boats; for I couldn’t rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead bears is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there wasn’t much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy-heartened about the gang, bin not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it I could. Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a-hooming down the river. It did seem a powerful long time before Jim’s light showed up; and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the ease; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff and turned in and slept like dead people. HU C K L E B E R R Y F I N N CHAPTER FOURTEEN By and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. We hadn’t ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn’t get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right: he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger. I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, ‘stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says: “I didn’ know dey was so many un um. I hain’t hearn bout none un um, skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat’s in a pack er k'yards. How much do a king git?" “Get?” I says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have jusr as much as they wanr; everything belongs to them.” H U C K L E B E R R Y F I N N "Ain dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?" "They don’t do nothing! Why, how you talk! They just set around.” “No; is dat so?” "Of course it is. They just set around—except, maybe, when there’s a war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or go hawking—just hawking and sp—Sh!— ’ you hear a noise?" We skipped out and looked; but it wasn’t nothing but the flutter of a steamboat’s wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back. “Yes," says I, “and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don’t go just so he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem.’’ “Roun’ de which?” “Harem.” “What’s de harem?” "The place where he keeps his wives. Don’t you know about the harem? Solomon had one; he had about a million wives." “Why, yes, dat’s so; I——I'd done forgot it. A harem’s a bo’d’n-house, I reck’n. Mos’ likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck’n de wives quarrels considable; en dat "crease de racket. Yit dey say Sollermun de wises’ man dat ever live. I doan’ take no stock in dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids’ er sich a blim-blammin all de time? No—‘deed he wouldn’t. A wise man ‘ud take en buil’ a biler-factry’; en den he could shet down de biler-factry when he want to res’.” Well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, her own self” "I doan k'yer what de widder say, he want no wise man nuther. He had some er de dad-fetchedes’ ways I ever see. Does you know bout dat chile dat he ‘uz gwyne to chop in two?” "Yes, the widow told me all about it." “Well, den! Warn’ dat de beatenes’ notion in de worl? You jes’ take en look at it a minute. Dah’s de stump, dah— dat’s one er de women; heah’s you—dat’s de yuther one; I’s Sollermun; en dish yer dollar.