Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's
comrade). Scene: The Mississippi Valley. Time: forty to fifty years ago |
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XI. |
XII. |
Chapter XII.
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XXVIII. |
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XXX. |
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XXXIII. |
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XXXVI. |
XXXVII. |
XXXVIII. |
XXXIX. |
XL. |
XLI. |
XLII. |
Chapter XII.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's
comrade). | ||
Chapter XII.
It must
a been close onto one o'clock
when we got below the island at
last,
and the raft did seem to go mighty slow.
If a boat was to
come 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 into 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 warn'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.
on the raft.
When the first streak of day begun to show, we tied up to a tow-head in
a
big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cotton-wood branches
with the
hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like
there had been
a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sand-bar
that has cotton-woods
on it as thick as harrow-teeth.
We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side,
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 to 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? 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 tow-head 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 the 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
steering oar, too, because one of the others might get
broke, on a snag or
something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang
the old lantern on; because
we must always
light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming down
stream, to
keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream
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
warn't often that we laughed, only a little
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. 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 St. Louis, but I
never believed
it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still
night. There warn'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 warn'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
does, and a good deed
ain't ever forgot. I never see
pap when he
didn't want the
chicken himself, but that is what
he used to say,
anyway.
he sometimes lifted a chicken.
Mornings, before daylight, I
slipped into corn fields and borrowed
a watermelon, or a mushmelon,
or a punkin, or some
new
corn, or things of that kind.
Pap always said it warn't no
harm to
borrow things, if you
was meaning to pay them back,
sometime; but
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
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 around, 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. 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 felt 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:
"Le's 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
we
better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. Like as not
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
and wash off 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. Scegars, I bet you—and cost five cents
apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a
month, and they don't 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? Not
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."
Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn't talk 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 starboard derrick,
and made
fast 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 onto it; and the next step fetched us in
front of the captain's 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 start 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, pretty 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 agoing 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 about 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—
"please don't, bill"
"I'd like to! And I orter, too, a mean skunk!"
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? Jist for noth'n. Jist because
threaten nobody any more, 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
Hatfield jist the same way—and don't he deserve
it?"
"But I don't 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 come 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. He says:
"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.
Les' 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
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: we'll rustle around and gether up whatever pickins
we've
overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the
truck. Then
we'll wait. Now I say it ain't agoin' 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 considerble 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 sweat, 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:
"it ain't good morals."
"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 boat 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.
'em. Quick—hurry! I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You
start at the raft, and——"
"Oh, my lordy, lordy! Raf'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo',
she done broke loose
en gone!—'en here we is!"
"oh! lordy lordy!"
Chapter XII.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's
comrade). | ||