University of Virginia Library

Chapter XV.

We judged that three nights more would
fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of
Illinois, where the Ohio River comes
in, and that was what we was after.
We would sell the raft and get on a
steamboat and go way up the Ohio
amongst the free States, and then be
out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun
to come on, and we made for a
tow-head to tie to, for it wouldn't
do to try to run in fog; but when I
paddled ahead in the canoe, with the
line, to make fast, there warn't anything
but little saplings to tie to.
I passed the line around one of them
right on the edge of the cut bank,
but there was a stiff current, and the
raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she
went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I
couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me—and then there
warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into the
canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a
stroke. But she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her.
I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my hands shook so I
couldn't hardly do anything with them.

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"we would sell the raft."

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right

down the tow-head. That was all right as far as it went, but the tow-head
warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out
into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was going
than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank or a
tow-head or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety
business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I whooped and
listened. Away down there, somewheres, I hears a small whoop, and up
comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again.
The next time it come, I see I warn't heading for it but heading away to the right
of it. And the next time, I was heading away to the left of it—and not gaining
on it much, either, for I was flying around, this way and that and 'tother, but it
was going straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time,
but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making
the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I hears the whoop
behind me. I was tangled good, now. That was somebody else's whoop, or
else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I
kept answering, till by-and-by it was in front of me again and I knowed the current
had swung the canoe's head down stream and I was all right, if that was Jim
and not some other raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a
fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off
to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the current was
tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set perfectly
still, then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't draw a breath
while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up, then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was
an island, and Jim had gone down 'tother side of it. It warn't no tow-head, that

you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island;
it might be five or six mile long and more than a half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was
floating along, of course, four or five mile an hour; but you don't ever think of
that. No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little
glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but
you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. If you
think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the
night, you try it once—you'll see.

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among the snags.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears the
answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it, and directly I
judged I'd got into a nest of tow-heads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on
both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between; and some that I
couldn't see, I knowed was there, because I'd hear the wash of the current against
the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't long
losing the whoops, down amongst the tow-heads; and I only tried to chase them

a little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a Jack-o-lantern. You
never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively, four or five times, to keep
from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the raft must be butting
into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and
clear out of hearing—it was floating a little faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again, by-and-by, but I couldn't hear
no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe,
and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe
and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but
I was so sleepy I couldn't help it; so I thought I would take just one little
cat-nap.

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asleep on the raft.

But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars was
shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern
first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was dreaming; and when
things begun to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last
week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of
timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see, by the stars. I
looked away down stream, and seen a black speck on the water. I took out after
it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast
together. Then I see another speck, and chased that; then another, and this
time I was right. It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his knees,
asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering oar. The other oar was
smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt. So
she'd had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and begun to gap,
and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says:

"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?"

"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead—you ain' drownded
—you's back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. Lemme
look at you, chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' dead! you's back agin,' live
en soun', jis de same ole Huck—de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!"

"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a drinking?"

"Drinkin'? Has I ben a drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a drinkin'?"

"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?"

"How does I talk wild?"

"How? why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that
stuff, as if I'd been gone away?"

"Huck—Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. Hain't you
ben gone away?"

"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain't been gone
anywheres. Where would I go to?"

"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. Is I me, or who is I?
Is I heah, or whah is I? Now dat's what I wants to know?"

"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a tangle-headed
old fool, Jim."

"I is, is I? Well you answer me dis. Didn't you tote out de line in de
canoe, fer to make fas' to de tow-head?"

"No, I didn't. What tow-head? I hain't seen no tow-head."

"You hain't seen no tow-head? Looky here—didn't de line pull loose en de
raf' go a hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?"

"What fog?"

"Why de fog. De fog dat's ben aroun' all night. En didn't you whoop, en
didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got los' en 'tother
one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? En didn't I bust
up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? Now
ain' dat so, boss—ain't it so? You answer me dat."

"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no islands,
nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with you all night till
you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I done the same. You
couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming."

"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?"

"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen."

"But Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as—"

"It don't make no difference how plain it is, there ain't nothing in it. I
know, because I've been here all the time."

Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it.
Then he says:

"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de
powerfullest dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired
me like dis one."

"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything,
sometimes. But this one was a staving dream—tell me all about it, Jim."

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it
happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start in
and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first tow-head
stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another
man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warnings that would
come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand
them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it.
The lot of tow-heads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome

people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't
talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and
into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more
trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got onto the raft, but it was
clearing up again, now.

"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough, as far as it goes, Jim," I says;
"but what does these things stand for?"

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft, and the smashed oar. You could
see them first rate, now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again.
He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake
it loose and get the facts back into its place again, right away. But when he
did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady, without ever
smiling, and says:

"What do dey stan' for? I's gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke
bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no mo' what become er me en de raf'. En
when I wake up en fine you back agin', all safe en soun', de tears come en I
could a got down on my knees en kiss' yo' foot I's so thankful. En all you wuz
thinkin 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck
dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's
en makes 'em ashamed."

Then he got up slow, and walked to the wigwam, and went in there, without
saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I
could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble
myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards,
neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if
I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.