Chapter IX.
I wanted
too 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 clumb 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.
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exploring the cave.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the
traps
in the cavern, we could rush there if 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.
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.
[ILLUSTRATION]
in the cave.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.
We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon
it
darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right
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-webby;
and here would come a blast
of wind that would bend the trees down and turn
up the pale underside
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—
fst! 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 the sky towards the
under side of the world, like rolling
empty barrels down stairs, where it's 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 a ben here, 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben
down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too, dat
you
would, honey. Chickens knows when its 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.
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 out amongst the trees; and sometimes the vines hung
so thick
we had to back 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 a 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
up-stairs 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. We 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:
[ILLUSTRATION]
jim sees a dead man.
"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."
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 dirty calico
dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some
women's under-clothes, hanging against
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 took the bottle, but it was broke. There
was
a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.
Theystood 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 brannew
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 bed-quilt off the bed,
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 fish-line as thick as
my
little finger, with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of
buckskin, and a leather
dog-collar, and a horse-shoe, 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, though 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.
