 Chapter 32 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eric Lipkin. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Chapter 32 When I got there, it was all still and Sunday-like and hot and sunshiny. The hands was gone to the fields, and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air, that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone. And if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering. Spirits that's been dead ever so many years, and you always think they're talking about you. As a general thing, makes a body wish he was dead too, but done with it all. Phelps's was one of those little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all looked alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard, style made out of logs, sawed off and upended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to climb over the fence with and for the women to stand on when they're going to jump onto a horse. Some sickly grass patches in the big yard. But mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with a nap rubbed off. Big double log house for the white folks, huge logs with a chink stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud stripes been whitewashed some time or another. Round log kitchen, the big, broad, open-but-roof passage joining it to the house. Log smokehouse back in the kitchen. Three little log nigger cabins in a row to other side the smokehouse. One little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side. Ash hopper and big kettle to vile soap in by the little hut. Bench by the kitchen door, the bucket of water and gourd. Hound asleep there in the sun, more hounds asleep round about. About three shade trees away off in a corner, some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence. Outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch. Then the cotton fields begins, and after the fields the woods. I went around and climbed over the back style by the ash hopper and started for the kitchen. When it got a little ways I heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again, and then I known for certain I wished I was dead. For that is the lonesome sound in the whole world. I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come. For I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone. When I got halfway, first one hound and then another got up and went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them and kept still. And such another pow wow as they made. In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel as you may say, spokes made out of dogs, circle of fifteen of them packed together around me, their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a bark in and a howling, and more are coming, and you could see them sailing over fences and round corners from everywhere. A nigger woman came tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand, singing out, be gone, ye spot, be gone, sir, and she fetched first one, and then another of them a clip and sent them howling. Then the rest followed, the next second half of them came back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. There ain't no harm in a hound, no how. And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but tolling and shirts. They hung on to their mother's gown and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful the way they always do. Here comes a white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bare-headed and her spinning stick in her hand, and behind her comes little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing. She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand, and she says, It is you at last, ain't it? I out with a yesem before I thought. She grabbed me and hugged me tight, and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook, and the tears came in her eyes, and run down over. She couldn't seem to hug and shake and hoff, and kept saying, You don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would, but lost sakes, I don't care for that. I'm so glad to see you. Dear, dear, it does look like I could eat you up. Children, eat your cousin Tom. Tell him howdy. But they ducked their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her, so she ran on. Lees, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away, or did you get your breakfast on the boat? I said I had got it on the boat, so then she started for the house, leading me by the hand of the children tagging after. When we got there, she sat me down in a split-bottom chair and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says, Now I can have a good look at you and loz me. I've been hungry for it, I'm many, and I'm many a time. All these long years, and it's come at last. We've been expecting you a couple days or more. What kept you? Boat, get a ground? Yes, I'm she. Don't say yes, I'm, say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get a ground? I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down. But I do a good deal on instinct, and my instinct said she would be coming up. Down towards Orleans. That didn't help me much, though, for I didn't know the names of bars down that way. I see I got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got a ground on, or now I struck an idea, and fetched it out. It weren't the grounding. That didn't keep us back but a little. We blew it out of cylinder head. Good gracious, anybody hurt? No, Mom. Guiled a nigger. Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago, last Christmas, your Uncle Silas was coming up from New Orleans on the old Lili Rook. She blew it out of cylinder head and crippled a man. I think you died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your Uncle Silas knowed a family and Baton Rouge had known his people very well. Yes, I remember now. He did die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him, but it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification. That was it. He turned blue all over and died in the hope for glorious resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your Uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you. And he's gone again. No more than an hour ago. He'll be back in a minute now. You must have met him on the road, didn't you? Oldish man with a... No, I didn't see nobody on Silas. The boat landed just at daylight and I left my baggage on the wharf and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country to put in the time and not get here too soon. And so I come down the back way. Who'd you give your baggage to? Nobody. Why, child, it'll be stoned. Not where I hid it, I reckon it won't, I says. How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat? It was kinder thin ice, but I says, the captain seemed me standing around and told me I better have something to eat before I went ashore. So he took me in the Texas to the officer's lunch, give me all I wanted. I was getting so easy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the children all the time. I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show. Mrs. Phelps kept it up and ran on so she made the cold, chilled streak all down my back because she says, but here I wasn't running on this way and you ain't told me a word about Cess nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little and you start up your yarn. Just tell me everything. Tell me all about them all, every one of them and how they are and what they're doing and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of. I was stumping up at good. Providence had stood by me this fur all right, but I was hard and tidy ground now. I see it more in a bed I've used to try to go ahead. I got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself, here's another place where I got to risk the truth. I opened my mouth to begin but you grabbed me and hauled me in behind the bed and says, here he comes, stick your head down lower. There that'll do. You can't be seen now. Don't you let on your here. I'll play a joke on him. Children don't say a word. I see I was in a fix now. But it weren't no use to worry. There weren't nothing to do just hold still. Try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck. I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in then the bed hit him. She jumps for him and says, has he come? No, says her husband. Goodness gracious, she says. What in the world can I become of him? I can't imagine, says the old gentleman. And I must say it makes me dreadful uneasy. Uneasy, she says. I'm ready to go distracted. He must have come and he've missed him along the road. I know it so. Something tells me so. Sally, I couldn't have missed him along the road. You know that. But oh dear, dear, what will Sis say? He must have come. He must have missed him. Oh, don't distress me anymore and I'm already distressed. I don't know what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end and I don't mind acknowledging. Time I write down scared. But there's no hope that he's come. For he couldn't come and we miss him. Sally, it's terrible. Just terrible. Something's happened to the boat shore. Why, Silas, look yonder up the road. Ain't that somebody coming? He sprung to the window at the head of the bed. And I gave Mrs. Phelps the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and gave me a pull and out I come. And when he turned back from the window, there she stood a beam in and a smile on like a house of fire. And I stand in pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stares and says, Why, who's that? How do you reckon, Tess? I ain't no idea who is it. It's Tom Sawyer. By jinx, I most slumped through the floor. But there weren't no time to swap knives. The old man grabbed me by one hand and shook and kept on shaking. And all the time how the women did dance around and laugh and cry. And then how they both did fire off questions about Sid and Mary and the rest of the tribe. But if they was joyful, there weren't nothing to what I was for it was like being born again. I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze to me for two hours. And at last, when my chin was so tired, he couldn't hardly go anymore. I told them more about my family. I mean the Sawyer family than ever happened to any sick Sawyer families. And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of White River and it took us three days to fix it. Which was alright and worked first rate because they didn't know what it would take three days to fix it. If I'd called it a bolt head it would have done just as well. Now I was feeling pretty comfortable and pretty uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself suppose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet. While I couldn't have it that way it wouldn't do at all. I must go up the road and away lay him. So I told the folks I reckon I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was forgoing along with me but I said no. I could drive the horse myself and I'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me. End of Chapter 32 Recording by Eric Lipkin Chapter 33 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by David Bakudi The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 33 So I started for town in the wagon and when I was half way I see a wagon coming and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer and I stopped and waited till he come along. I says hold on I stopped alongside and his mouth opened up like a trunk and stayed so. And he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat and then says I ain't ever done you no harm you know that so then what you want to come back and haunt me for I says I ain't come back I ain't been gone When he heard my voice it righted him up some because I wouldn't on you honest engine now you ain't a ghost honest engine I ain't I says well I well that oughta settle it of course but I can't somehow seem to understand it no way looky here weren't you ever murdered at all no I wasn't ever murdered at all I played it on them you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me so he done it and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do and he wanted to know all about it right off because it was a grand adventure and mysterious and so it hit him where he lived but I said leave it alone till by and by and told his driver to wait and we drove off a little piece and I told him the kind of fix I was in and what did he reckon we better do he said let him alone a minute and don't disturb him and thought and pretty soon he says it's alright I've got it take my trunk in your wagon and let on its yarn and turn back and fool along slow so as to get to the house about the time you want to and I'll go towards town a piece and take a fresh start and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you and you needn't let one to know me at first I says alright but wait a minute there's one more thing a thing that nobody don't know about but me and that is there's a nigger here and I'm a trying to steal out of slavery and his name is Jim old Miss Watson's Jim he says what why Jim is he stopped and went to studying I says I know what you'll say you'll say it's dirty low down business but what if it is I'm low down and I'm going to steal him and I want you to keep mom and not let one will you? his eyes lit up and he says I'll help you steal him well I go all holts then like I was shot it was the most astonishing speech I ever heard and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer felt considerable in my estimation only I couldn't believe it Tom Sawyer a nigger stealer oh shucks I says you're joking I ain't joking either well then I says joking or no joking if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger I get to remember that you don't know nothing about him and I don't know nothing about him then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way and I drove mine but of course I forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking so I got home a heap too quick for that length of the trip the old gentleman was at the door and he says why this is wonderful whoever would have thought it was in that mare to do it I wish we had timed her and she ain't sweated a hair why I wouldn't take $100 for that horse now I wouldn't honest and yet I'd assault her for 15 before and thought that was all she was worth that's all he said he was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see but it weren't surprising because he weren't only just a farmer he was a preacher too and he had a little one horse log church down back of the plantation which he built himself at his own expense he spent half an hour in a schoolhouse and never charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too there was plenty of other farmer preachers like that and done the same way down south in about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front style and Aunt Sally, she see it through the window because it was only about 50 yards and says why there's somebody come I wonder who it is why I do believe it's a stranger Jimmy, that's one of the children another plate for dinner and so he lays over everybody made a rush for the front door because of course a stranger don't come every year and so he lays over the yellow fever for interest when he does come Tom was over the style and starting for the house the wagon was spinning up the road for the village and we was all bunched in the front door Tom had his store close on and an audience and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer in them circumstances to throw in an amount of style that was suitable he weren't a boy to mickey along up that yard like a sheep no, he come calm and important like the ram when he got in front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them and says Mr. Archibald Nichols I presume no my boy says the old gentleman I'm sorry to say, your driver has deceived you come in, come in Tom, he took a look back over his shoulder and says, too late he's out of sight yes he's gone my son and you must come in and eat your dinner with us and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols oh I can't make you so much trouble I couldn't think of it I'll walk, I don't mind the distance but we won't let you walk it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do so come right in oh do says Aunt Sally it's a long dusty three mile and we can't let you walk and besides I've already told him to put on another plate when I see you coming so you mustn't disappoint us come right in and make yourself at home so Tom you thank them very hearty and handsome and let himself be persuaded and come in and when he was in he said he was a stranger from Hicksville, Ohio and his name was William Thompson and he made another bow well he run on and on and on making up stuff about Hicksville and everybody in it he could invent and I got a little nervous and I wondered how this was going to help me out of my scrape and at last still talking along he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth and then settled back again in his chair comfortable and was going on talking but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand and says you audacious puppy that kind of hurt and says I'm surprised at you ma'am you're sp- what do you reckon I am I have a good notion to take and say what do you mean by kissing me he looked kind of humble and says I didn't mean nothing ma'am I didn't mean no harm I thought you'd like it while you born fool she took up this spinning stick and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it what made you think I'd like it only they told me you would they told you I would whoever told you is another lunatic I've never heard the beat of it who's they why everybody they all said so ma'am it was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped and her fingers worked like she wanted to it was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him and she says who's everybody out with their names or there will be an idiot short he got up and looked distressed and fumbled his hat and says I'm sorry and I weren't expecting it they told me to they all told me to they all said kiss her and said she'd like it they all said it every one of them but I'm sorry ma'am and I won't do it no more I won't honest you won't won't you well I should reckon you won't no one I'm honest about it I will never do it again well I never see the beat of it in my born days I lay you'll be in the Methuselum numskull of creation before I ever ask you or the likes of you well he says it does surprise me so I can't make it out somehow they said you would and I thought you would but he stopped and looked around slow like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewhere and fetched up on the old gentleman's and says didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her sir well I know I well no I believe I didn't then he looks on around the same way to me and says Tom didn't you think Aunt Sally'd open out her arms and say Sid Sawyer my land she says breaking in and jumping for him you impudent young rascal to fool a body so and was going to hug him but he fended her off and says no not till you've asked me first so she didn't lose no time but asked him and hugged him then kissed him over and over again and then turned him over to the old man and he took what was left and after they got a little quiet again she says why dear me I never see such a surprise we weren't looking for you at all but only Tom sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him it's because it weren't intended for any of us to come but Tom he says but I begged and begged and at the last minute she let me come too so coming down the river me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first and for me to buy and buy tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger but it was a mistake Aunt Sally this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come no not impudent welps Sid you want to have your jaws boxed I ain't been so put out since I don't know when but I don't care I don't mind the terms I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here well to think of that performance I was most putrefied with astonishment and you gave me that smack we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and there was things enough on that table for seven families and all hot too none of your flabby tough meat that's laid in the cupboard and a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it but it was worth it and it didn't cool a bit neither the kind of interruptions do lots of times there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon and me and Tom was on the lookout all the time but it weren't no use they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger and we was afraid to try to work up to it but at supper at night one of the little boys says Pa, main time and Sid and me go to the show? No, says the old man I reckon there ain't going to be any and you couldn't go if there was because the runaway nigger told Burton and me all about that scandalous show and Burton said he would tell the people so I reckon they've drove the audacious loafers out of town before this time so there it was but I couldn't help it Tom and me was to sleep in the same room in bed so being tired we bid good night and went up to bed right after supper and clumped out of the window and down the lightning rod and shoved for town for I didn't believe anybody was going to give the king so if I didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure on the road, Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered and how Pap disappeared pretty soon and didn't come back no more and what a stir there was when Jim run away and I told Tom all about our royal nonsuch rept scallions and as much of the raft voyage as I had time to and as we struck into town and up through the middle of it it was as much as half after eight then here comes a raging rush of people with torches and an awful whooping and yelling and banging tin pans and blowing horns and we jumped to one side to let them go by and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke a straddle of a rail that is, I know it was the king and the duke though they was all over tar and feathers and it didn't look like nothing in the world that was human just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes well it made me sick to see it and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them anymore in the world it was a dreadful thing to see human beings can be awful cruel to one another we see we was too late couldn't do no good we asked some stridlers about it and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on stage then somebody gave a signal and the house rose up and went for them they belonged back home and they weren't feeling so brash as I was before but kind of ornery and humble and to blame somehow thought we hadn't done nothing but that's always the way it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong a person's conscience ain't got no sense it just goes for him anyway if I had a yellow dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pies in him it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides no good, no how Time Sawyer he says the same End of Chapter 33 Chapter 34 We stopped talking and got to thinking by and by Tom says Lookie here huck what fools we are to not think of it before I bet I know where Jim is No where in that hut down by the ash hopper Why lookie here was that dinner didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vitals yes what did you think the vitals was for for a dog so did I well it wasn't for a dog why because part of it was watermelon so it was I noticed it well it does beat all that I never thought about a dog not eating watermelon it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time well the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in and he locked it again when he came out he fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table same key I bet watermelon shows man lock shows prisoner and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation and where the people's all so kind and good Jim's the prisoner all right I'm glad we found it out detective fashion I wouldn't give shucks for it any other way now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal Jim and I will study out one too and we'll take the one we like the best what a head for just a boy to have I had Tom Sawyer's head I wouldn't trade it off to be a Duke nor mate of a steamboat nor clown in a circus nor nothing I can think of I went to thinking out a plan but only just to be doing something I knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from pretty soon Tom says ready yes he says all right bring it out my plan is this I says we can easy find out if it's Jim in there then get up my canoe tomorrow night and fetch my raft over from the island then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's bridges after he goes to bed and shove off down the river on the raft with Jim hiding day times and running nights the way me and Jim used to do before wouldn't that plan work work why certainly it would work like rats are fighting but it's too blame simple there ain't nothing to it what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that it is mild as goose milk why huck it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory I never said nothing because I wasn't expecting nothing different but I know mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it and it didn't he told me what it was and I see in a minute it was worth 15 of mine for style and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would and maybe get us all killed besides so I was satisfied and said we would waltz in on it I needn't tell what it was here because I know it wouldn't stay the way it was I know he would be changing it around every which way as we went along and heaving in new bullinesses wherever he got a chance and that is what he done well one thing was dead sure and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest and was actually gonna help steal that nigger out of slavery that was the thing that was too many for me here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up and had a character to lose and folks at home that had characters and he was bright and not leather headed and knowing and not ignorant and not mean but kind and yet here he was without any more pride or rightness or feeling than to stoop to this business and make himself a shame and his family a shame before everybody I couldn't understand it no way at all it was outrageous and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so and so be his true friend and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself and I did start to tell him but he shut me up and says don't you reckon I know what I'm about don't I generally know what I'm about yes didn't I say I was going to help steal the nigger yes well then that's all he said and that's all I said it wasn't no use to say anymore because when he said he'd do a thing he always done it but I couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing so I just let it go and never bothered no more about it if he was bound to have it so I couldn't help it when we got home the house was all dark and still so we went on down to the hut by the ash hopper for to examine it we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do they knowed us and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anybody comes by in the night when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides and on the side I wasn't acquainted with which was the north side we found a square window hole up tolerable high with just one stout board nailed across it I says here's the ticket this hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we wrench off the board Tom says it's as simple as t-t-toe three in a row and as easy as playing hooky I should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that Huck Finn well then I says how will it do to saw him out the way I'd done before I was murdered that time that's more like it's real mysterious and troublesome and good he says but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long there ain't no hurry let's keep on looking around betwixt the hut and the fence on the back side was a lean-to that joined the hut at the eaves and was made out of plank it was as long as the hut but narrow only about six foot wide the door to it was at the south end and was padlocked Tom he went to the soap kettle and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with so he took it and prized out one of the staples the chain fell down and we opened the door and went in and shut it and struck a match and see the shed was only built against a cabin and had no connection with it and there wasn't no floor to the shed nor nothing in it but some old rusty played-out hose and spades and picks and a crippled plow the match went out and so did we and shoveled in the staple again and the door was locked as good as ever Tom was joyful he says now we're all right we'll dig him out it'll take about a week then we started for the house and I went in the back door you only have to pull a buckskin latch string they don't fasten the doors but that weren't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning rod but after he got up halfway about three times and missed fire and fell every time and the last time most busted his brains out he thought he'd gotta give it up but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck and this time he made the trip in the morning we was up at break of day and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim if it was Jim that was being fed the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things and whilst the others was leaving the key come from the house this nigger had a good natured chuckle headed face and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread that was to keep witches off he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights and making him see all kinds of strange things and hear all kinds of strange words and noises and he didn't believe he was ever witch so long before in his life he got so worked up and got to running on so about his troubles he forgot all about what he'd been going to do so Tom says what's the vitals for going to feed the dogs the nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face like when you heave a brick bat in a mud puddle and he says yes my Sid a dog tourist dog too does you want to go and look at him yes I hunched Tom and whispers you going right here in the daybreak that wasn't the plan no it wasn't but it's the plan now so dread him we went along but I didn't like it much when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything it was so dark but Jim was there sure enough and could see us and he sings out why hawk good lord aimed at Mr. Tom I just knowed how it would be I just expected it I didn't know nothing to do and if I had I couldn't have done it because that nigger busted in and says do we know you gentlemen we could see pretty well now Tom he looked at the nigger steady and kind of wondering and says does who know us why does he run my nigger I don't reckon he does but what put that into your head what put it there didn't he just this minute sing out like he knowed you Tom says in a puzzled up kind of way well that's mighty curious who sung out when did he sing out what did he sing out and turns to me perfectly calm and says did you hear anybody sing out of course there wasn't nothing to be said but the one thing so I says no I ain't heard nobody say nothing then he turns to Jim and looks him over like he never see him before and says did you sing out no sa says Jim I ain't said nothing sa not a word no sa I ain't said a word did you ever see us before no sa not as I nose on so Tom turns to the nigger which was looking wild and distressed and says kind of severe what do you reckon's the matter with you anyway what made you think somebody sung out oh it's the day plane which is sa and I wished I was dead I do days all is at it sa and they do most kill me they scares me so please don't tell nobody about it sa or on my silence he'll scold me cause he said there ain't no witches I just wish to goodness he was here now then what would he say I just bet he couldn't find no way to get around it this time but it's all is just so people that sa stay sa they won't look into nothing and find it out for themselves and when you find it out and tell them about it they don't believe you Tom give him a dime and said we wouldn't tell nobody and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wall with and then looks at Jim and says I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger if I was to catch nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away I wouldn't give him up I'd hang him and whilst the nigger stepped into the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good he whispers to Jim and says don't ever let on to know us and if you hear any digging going on nights it's us we're going to get you free Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it then the nigger come back and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us to and he said he would more particular if it was dark because the witches went for him mostly in the dark and it was good to have folks around then End of Chapter 34 Recording by Jeffrey Wilson Ames, Iowa Chapter 35 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jeffrey Wilson Ames, Iowa The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 35 It would be most an hour yet till breakfast so we left and struck down into the woods because Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by and a lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble What we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called Foxfire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds and sat down to rest and Tom says kind of dissatisfied blame it This whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan There ain't no watchman to be drugged Now there ought to be a watchman There ain't even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to and there's Jim chained by one leg with a 10 foot chain to the leg of his bed Why all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain and Uncle Silas he trusts everybody sends the key to the pumpkin headed nigger and don't send nobody to watch the nigger Jim could have got out of that window hole before this only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a 10 foot chain on his leg Why drat it hook It's the stupidest arrangement I ever see You got to invent all the difficulties Well we can't help it We got to do the best we can with the materials we've got Anyhow there's one thing There's more honor in getting him out through a lot of challenges and dangers where there wasn't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them and you had to contrive them all out of your own head Now look at just that one thing of the lantern When you come down to the cold facts we simply got to let on the lantern's rescue Why we could work with a torch light procession if we wanted to I believe Now whilst I think we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get What do you want of a saw What do we want of it Ain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed off so as to get the chain loose Why you just said a body could lift up the bed instead and slip the chain off Well if that ain't just like you huck fin You can get up the infant in the most scooliest ways of going at a thing Why ain't you ever read any books at all Baron Trank nor Casanova nor Benvenuto Cellini nor Henry Four nor none of them heroes Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old matey way as that No the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed and leave it just so and swallow the saw dust so it can't be found and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest Senescal can't see no sign of it's being sawed and thinks the bed leg is perfectly sound Then the night you're ready fetch the leg a kick down she goes slip off your chain and there you are Nothing to do but hit your rope ladder to the battlements Shin down it break your leg in the moat because a rope ladder is 19 foot too short you know and there's your horses and your trusty vassals and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle and away you go to your native Languedoc or Navar or wherever it is it's gaudi huck I wish there was a moat to this cabin if we get time if we escape we'll dig one I says what do we want of a moat when we're going to sneak him out from under the cabin but he never heard me he had forgotten me and everything else he had his chin in his hand thinking pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head then sighs again and says no it wouldn't do there ain't necessity enough for it for what he says why to saw Jim's leg off he says good line I says why there ain't no necessity for it and what would you want to saw his leg off for anyway well some of the best authorities has done it they couldn't get the chain off so they just cut their hand off and shoved and a leg would be better still but we got to let that go there's no necessity enough in this case and besides Jim's a nigger and wouldn't understand the reasons for it and how it's the custom in Europe so we'll let it go but there's one thing he can have a rope ladder we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough and we can send it to him in a pie it's mostly done that way and I've had worse pies why Tom Sawyer how you talk he says Jim ain't got no use for a rope ladder he has got use for it how you talk you better say you don't know nothing about it he's got to have a rope ladder they all do what in the nation can he do with it do with it he can hide it in his bed candy that's what they all do and he's got to too hook anything that's regular you want to be starting something fresh all the time suppose he don't do nothing with it ain't it there in his bed for a clue after he's gone and don't you reckon they'll want clues of course they will and you wouldn't leave them any that would be a pretty how to do wouldn't it I never heard of such a thing well I says if it's in the regulations and he's got to have it alright let him have it because I don't wish to go back on no regulations but there's one thing Tom Sawyer if we go to tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder we're going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally just as sure as you're born now the way I look at it a hickory bark ladder don't cost nothing and don't waste nothing and is just as good to load up a pie with and hide in a straw tick as any rag ladder you can start and as for Jim he ain't had no experience and so he don't care what kind of a oh shucks hawk fin if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep still that's what I'd do whoever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickory bark ladder why it's perfectly ridiculous well alright Tom fix it your own way but if you'll take my advice you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the closed line he said that would do and that gave him another idea and he says borrow a shirt too what do we want of a shirt Tom? want it for Jim to keep a journal on journal your granny Jim can't write suppose he can't write he can make marks on the shirt candy if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel hoop why Tom we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one and quicker too prisoners don't have geese running around the dungeon keep to pull pens out of you muggins they always make their pens out of the hardest toughest troublesomeist piece of old brass handle stick or something like that they can get their hands on and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out too because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall they wouldn't use a goose quill if they had it it ain't regular well then what do we make him the ink out of many makes it out of iron rust and tears but that's the common sort and women the best authorities uses their own blood Jim can do that and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window the iron mask always done that and it's a blame good way too Jim ain't got no tin plates they feed him in a pan that ain't nothing we can get him some can't nobody read his plates that ain't got nothing to do with it huck fin all he's got to do is write on the plate and throw it out you don't have to be able to read it why half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate or anywhere else well then what's the sense in wasting the plates why blame it all it ain't the prisoner's plates but it's somebody's plates ain't it well supposing it is what does the prisoner care whose he broke off there because we heard the breakfast horn blowing so we cleared out for the house along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes line and I found an old sack and put them in it and we went down and got the foxfire and put that into I called it borrowing because that was what Pap always called it but Tom says it wasn't borrowing it was stealing he said we was representing prisoners and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it and nobody don't blame them for it either no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with Tom said it's his right and so as long as we was representing a prisoner we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with he said if we weren't prisoners it would be a very different thing and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he wasn't a prisoner so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy and yet he made a mighty fuss one day after that when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and edit and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for Tom says that what we meant was we could steal anything we needed well I says the watermelon but he said I didn't need it to get out of prison with there's where the difference was he said if I wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to Jim to kill the Senescal with it would have been alright so I let it go at that though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of old leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hug a watermelon well as I was saying we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business and nobody in sight around the yard then Tom he carried the sack into the lean to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch by and by he come out and we went and sat down on the wood pile to talk everything's alright now except tools and that's easy fixed tools I says yes tools for what why to dig with we ain't gonna gnaw him out are we ain't them old crippled pigs and things and they're good enough to dig a nigger out with I says he turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry and says you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with now I want to ask you if you got any reasonableness in you at all what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero why they might as well lend him the key and done with it picks and shovels why they wouldn't furnish him to a king well then he says if we don't want the picks and shovels what do we want a couple of case knives to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with yes confound it it's foolish Tom it don't make no difference how foolish it is it's the right way and it's the regular way and there ain't no other way that ever I heard of and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things always dig out with a case knife and not through dirt mind you generally it's through solid rock and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks and forever and ever while I look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deep in the harbor of Marseille the dug himself out that way how long was he at it you reckon I don't know well guess I don't know a month and a half 37 year and he come out in China that's the kind I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock Jim don't know nobody in China what's that got to do with it neither did that other fellow but you're always a wandering off on a side issue why can't you stick to the main point alright I don't care where he comes out so he comes out and Jim don't either I reckon but there's one thing anyway Jim's too old to be dug out with a case knife he won't last yes he will last too you don't reckon it's going to take 37 years to dig out through a dirt foundation do you how long will it take Tom well we can't risk being as long as we ought to because it may take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans he'll hear Jim ain't from there then his next move will be to advertise Jim or something like that so we can't risk being as long digging him out as we ought to by rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years but we can't things being so uncertain what I recommend is this that we really dig right in as quick as we can and after that we can let on to ourselves that we was at it 37 years then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm yes I reckon that'll be the best way now there's sense in that I says letting on don't cost nothing letting on ain't no trouble and if it's any object I don't mind letting on we was at it 150 years it wouldn't strain me none after I got my hand in so I'll mosey along now and smouch a couple of case knives smouch three I says we want one to make a saw out of Tom if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it I says there's an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weather boarding behind the smoke house he looked kind of weary and discouraged like and says it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing huck run along and smouch the knives three of them so I done it end of chapter 35 recording by Jeffrey Wilson aims Iowa chapter 36 of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jeffrey Wilson aims Iowa The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 36 as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean to and got out our pile of fox fire and went to work we cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log Tom said he was right behind Jim's bed now and we dig in under it and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there because Jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole so we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight and then we was dog tired and our hands was blistered and you'd see we'd done anything hardly at last I says this ain't no 37 year job this is a 38 year job Tom Sawyer he never said nothing but he sighed and pretty soon he stopped digging and then for a good little while I know that he was thinking then he says it ain't no use huck it ain't a gun to work if we was prisoners it would because then we'd have as many years as we wanted and no hurry and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while they was changing watches and so our hands wouldn't get blistered and we could keep it up right along year in and year out and do it right and the way it ought to be done but we can't fool along we got a rush we ain't got no time to spare if we was to put in another night this way we'd be off for a week to let our hands get well couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner well then what we gonna do Tom I'll tell you it ain't right and it ain't moral and I wouldn't like it to get out but there ain't only just the one way we gotta dig him out with the picks and let on it's case knives now you're talking I says leveler and leveler all the time Tom Sawyer I says picks is the thing moral or no moral and as for me I don't care shucks for the morality of it know how when I start in to steal a nigger or a watermelon or a Sunday school book I ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done what I want is my nigger or what I want is my watermelon or what I want is my Sunday school book and if it picks the handiest thing I'm gonna dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday school book out with and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it another well he says there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this if it wasn't so I wouldn't approve of it nor I wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke because right is right and wrong is wrong and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better it might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick without any letting on because you don't know no better but it wouldn't for me because I do know better give me a case knife he had his own by him but I handed him mine he flung it down and says give me a case knife I didn't know just what to do but then I thought I went around amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him and he took it and went to work and never said a word he was always just that particular full of principle so then I got a shovel and then we picked and shoveled turned about and made the fur fly we stuck to it about a half an hour which was as long as we could stand up but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it when I got upstairs I looked out of the window and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning rod but he couldn't come it his hands was so sore at last he says it ain't no use it can't be done what do you reckon I better do can't you think of no way yes I says but I reckon it ain't regular come up the stairs next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candle stick in the house for to make some pens for Jim out of and six tallow candles and I hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance and stole three tin plates Tom says it wasn't enough but I said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that Jim throwed out because they'd fallen the dog fennel and gymson weeds under the window hole then we could tote them back and he could use them over again so Tom was satisfied then he says now the thing to study out is how to get the things to Jim take them in through the hole I says when we get it done he only just looked scornful and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea and then he went to studying by and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways but there wasn't no need to decide on any of them yet said we'd got to post Jim first that night we went down the lightning route a little after ten and took one of the candles along and listened under the window hole and heard Jim snoring so we pitched it in and it didn't wake him then we whirled in with the pick and shovel and in about two hours and a half the job was done we crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin and pawed around and found the candle and lit it Jim a while and found him looking hearty and healthy and then we woke him up gentle and gradual he was so glad to see us he most cried and called us honey and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off his leg with right now and clearing out without losing any time but Tom he showed him how unregular it would be and sat down and told him all about our plans and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm and not to be the least afraid because we would see he got away sure so Jim he said it was alright and we sat there and talked over old times a while and then Tom asked a lot of questions and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him and had Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat and both of them was kind as they could be now I know how to fix it we'll send you some things by them I said don't do nothing of the kind it's one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck but he never paid no attention to me went right on it was his way when he'd got his plan set so he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope ladder pie and other large things by Nat the nigger that fed him and he must be on the lookout surprised and not let Nat see him open them and we would put small things in Uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out and we would tie things to Aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance and told him what they would be and what they was for and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood and all that he told him everything Jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it he was white folks and no better than him so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as Tom said Jim had plenty corn cob pipes and tobacco so he had a write down good sociable time then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed with hands that looked like they'd been charred Tom was in high spirits he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual and said if he only could see his way to it he would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as 80 years and would be the best time on record and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it in the morning we went out to the wood pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket then we went to the nigger cabins and while I got Nat's notice off Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn pond that was in Jim's pan and we went along with Nat to see how it would work and it just worked noble when Jim bit into it most mashed all his teeth out and there wasn't ever anything could have worked better Tom said so himself Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it three or four places first and whilst we was standing there in the dimmish light here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed and they kept on piling in till there was 11 of them and there wasn't hardly room in there to get your breath by Jim's we forgot to fasten that lean-to door the nigger Nat he only jest hollered witches once and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs and begun to groan like he was dying Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat and the dogs went for it and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door and I knowed he fixed the other door too then he went to work on the nigger coaxing him and petting him and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again he raised up and blinked his eyes around and says Marsid, you'll say I was a fool but if I didn't believe I see most million dogs and devils or something I wished I may die right here in these tracks I did most surely I felt them they was all over me dad fetch it, I just wish I could get my hands on one of them witches just once only just once but mostly I wished they'd let me alone I does Tom says well I tell you what I think what makes them come here just at this runaway niggers breakfast time it's because they're hungry that's the reason for a witch pie that's the thing for you to do but my land Marsid, how's I going to make them a witch pie I don't know how to make it I ain't never heard of such a thing before well then I'll have to make it myself will you do it honey will you, I'll wish up the ground under your foot I will alright I'll do it seeing it's you and showed us the runaway nigger but you gotta be mighty careful when we come around you turn your back and then whatever we've put in the pan don't you let on you see it at all and don't you look when Jim unloads the pan something might happen I don't know what and above all don't you handle the witch things handle them Marsid what is you a talking about I wouldn't lay the weight on my finger on him not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars I wouldn't End of Chapter 36 Recording by Jeffrey Wilson Ames, Iowa Chapter 37 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jeffrey Wilson Ames, Iowa The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain Chapter 37 That was all fixed so then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard where they keep the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles and wore out tin things and all such truck and scratched around and found an old tin wash pan as well as we could to bake the pie in and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name in sorrows on the dungeon walls with and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair and tell her we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas's hat which was on the bureau because we heard the children say their paw and ma was going to the runaway niggers house this morning and then went to breakfast and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat pocket and Aunt Sally wasn't come yet so we had to wait a little while and when she come she was hot and red and cross and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing and then she went to sleucing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other and says I've hunted high and I've hunted low and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm and let a cry out of him the size of a war-woop and Tom he turned kind of blew around the gills and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that and I would have sold out for half price if there was a bitter but after that we was all right again it was a sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold Uncle Silas he says it's most uncommon curious I can't understand it I know perfectly well I took it off because because you ain't got but one on just listen at the man I know you took it off and know it by a better way than your world-gathering memory too because it was on the clothesline yesterday I see it there myself but it's gone that's the long and the short of it and you'll just have to change to a red fennel one till I can get time to make a new one and it'll be the third I've made in two years it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts and whatever you do manage to do with them is more than I can make out a body think you would learn to take some sort of care of them at your time of life I know it Sally and I do try all I can but it oughtn't to be altogether my fault because you know I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me and I don't believe I've ever lost one of them off of me well it ain't your fault if you haven't Silas you'd have done it if you could I reckon and the shirt ain't all that's gone another there's a spoon gone and that ain't all there was ten and now there's only nine the calf got the shirt I reckon but the calf never took the spoon that's certain why what else is gone Sally there's six candles gone that's what the rats could have got the candles and I reckon they did I wonder if they don't walk off with the whole place the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it and if they weren't fools they'd sleep in your hair Silas you'd never find it out but you can't lay the spoon on the rats and that I know well Sally I'm in fault and I acknowledge it I've been remiss but I won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes oh I wouldn't hurry next year I'll do Matilda, Angelina, Ereminta, Phelps whack comes the thimble and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar bowl without fooling around any just then a bigger woman steps on to the passage and says Mrs, there's a sheet gone a sheet gone well for the land's sake I'll stop up them holes today says Uncle Silas looking sorrowful oh dude shut up suppose the rats took the sheet where is it gone Lise clad of goodness I ain't no notion Miss Sally she was on the clothesline yesterday but she done gone she ain't done no more now I reckon the world is coming to an end I never see the beat of it in all my born days a shirt and a sheet and a spoon and six can Mrs comes the young yellow wench days a brass candle-sick missin clear out from here you ha see or I'll take a skillet to you well she was just a biling I begun to lay for a chance I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated she kept her raging right along running her insurrection all by herself and everybody else mighty meek and quiet and at last Uncle Silas looking kind of foolish fishes up that spoon out of his pocket she stopped with her mouth open and her hands up and as for me I wished I was in Jerusalem or somewhere's but not long because she says it's just as I expected so you had it in your pocket all the time and like as not you've got the other things there too how'd it get there I really don't know Sally he says kind of apologizing or you know I would tell I was studying over my text 17 before breakfast and I reckon I put it in there not noticing meaning to put my testament in and it must be so because my testament ain't in but I'll go and see and if the testament is where I had it I'll know I didn't put it in and that will show that I laid the testament down and took up the spoon and oh for the land's sake give a body a rest go long now the whole kid in byling of you and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my peace of mind I'da heard her if she'da said it to herself let alone speaking it out and I'da got up and obeyed her if I'da been dead as we was passing through the setting room the old man he took up his hat and the shingle nail fell out on the floor and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantle shelf and never said nothing and went out Tom see him do it and remembered about the spoon and says well it ain't no use to send things by him no more he ain't reliable then he says but he done us a good turn with the spoon anyway without knowing it and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it stop up his rat holes there was a noble good lot of them down-seller and it took us a whole hour but we'd done the job tight and good and ship-shape then we heard steps on the stairs and blowed out our light and hid and here comes the old man with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff into other looking as absent-minded as year before last he went a-mooning around first to one rat hole and then another till he'd been to them all then he stood about five minutes picking tallow drip off of his candle and thinking then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs saying well for the life of me I can't remember when I done it I could show her now that I wasn't to blame on account of the rats but never mind let it go I couldn't do no good and so he went on a-mumbling upstairs and then we left he was a mighty nice old man and always is Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon but he said we'd got to have it so he took a think when he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side and I slid one of them up my sleeve and Tom says why Aunt Sally there ain't but nine spoons yet she says go along to your play and don't bother me I know better I counted them myself well I've counted them twice Andy and I can't make but nine she looked out of all patients but of course she came to count anybody would I declared to gracious there ain't but nine she says why what in the world plague take these things I'll count them again so I slipped back the one I had and when she got done counting she says hang the troublesome rubbish there's ten now and she looked huffy and bothered both but Tom says huffy I don't think there's ten you numbskull didn't you see me count them I know but well I'll count them again so I smouched one and they come out nine same as the other time well she was in a tearing way just a trembling all over she was so mad but she counted and counted till she got that adult she'd start to count in the basket for spoons sometimes and so three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley west and she said clear out and let her have some peace and if we come bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us so we had the odd spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was giving us our sailing orders and Jim got it all right along with her shingle nail before noon we was very well satisfied with this business and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did and said that after she'd about cleaned her head off for the next three days he judged she'd give it up and offered to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them anymore so we put the sheet back on the line that night and stole one out of her closet and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had anymore and she didn't care and warden going to bully rag her soul out about it and wouldn't count them again not to save her life she'd rather die first so we was all right now as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed up counting and as to the candlestick it warden no consequence it would blow over by and by but that pie was a job we had no end of trouble with that pie we fixed it up away down in the woods and cooked it there and we got it done at last and very satisfactory too but not all in one day and we had to use up three wash pans full of flour before we got through and we got burnt pretty much all over in places and eyes put out with the smoke because you see we didn't want nothing but a crust and we couldn't prop it up right and she would always cave in but of course we thought of the right way at last which was to cook the ladder too in the pie so then we laid in with Jim the second night and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could have hung a person with we let on it took nine months to make it and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods but it wouldn't go into the pie being made of a whole sheet that way there was rope enough for forty pies if we'd have wanted them and plenty left over for soup or sausage or anything you choose we could have had a whole dinner but we didn't need it all we needed was just enough for the pie and so we throwed the rest away we didn't cook none of the pies in the wash pan afraid the solder would melt but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of because it belonged to one of his ancestors with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early ships and was hit away up Garrett with pots and things that was valuable not on account of being any account because they weren't but on account of them being relics you know and we snicked her out private and took her down there but she failed on the first pies because we didn't know how but she come up smiling on the last one we took and lined her with dough and set her in the coals and loaded her up with ragrope and put on a dough roof and shut down the lid and put hot embers on top and stood off 5 foot with a long handle cool and comfortable and in 15 minutes she turned out a pie that was a satisfaction to look at but the person that edit would want to fetch a couple of kegs of toothpicks along for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about and lay him in enough stomach ache to last him till next time too Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan and we put the 3 tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vitals and so Jim got everything alright and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window hole End of Chapter 37 Recording by Jeffrey Wilson Ames, Iowa by Mark Twain Chapter 38 Jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms they all do Jim says Well, I ain't got no coat of arms I ain't got nothing but this year old shirt and you know I got to keep the journal on that Oh, you don't understand Jim a coat of arms is very different Well, I says Jim's right anyway when he's got a coat of arms and a coat of arms and a coat of arms and a coat of arms Well, I says Jim's right anyway when he says he ain't got no coat of arms because he ain't I reckon I know that Tom says but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this because he's going out right there ain't going to be no flaws on his record so whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brick bat apiece Jim, I'm making his and out of the brass and I'm making mine out of the spoon Tom said to work to think out the coat of arms he said he'd struck on so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on he says on the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base a saltier Murray in the Fests with a dog Couchant for a common charge and under his foot a chain embattled for slavery with a chevron vert and a chief engrailed and three Invected lines on a field as your with the Nombril points rampant on a dance set indented crest a runaway nigger sable with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister and a couple of ghouls for supporters which is you and me motto maggiore fretta minore auto got it out of a book means the more you waste the less speed gee willikens I says but what does the rest of it mean we ain't got no time to bother over that he says we got to dig in like all get out well anyway I says what's some of it what's a Fests a Fests is you don't need to know what a Fests is I'll show him how to make it when he gets to it shucks Tom I says I think you might tell a person what's a bar sinister oh I don't know but he's got to have it all the nobility does that was just his way if it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you he wouldn't do it you might pump at him a week it wouldn't make no difference he got all that coat of arm business fixed so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work which was to plan out a mournful inscription said Jim got to have one like they all done he made up a lot and wrote them out on a paper and read them off so 1. Here a captive heart busted 2. Here a poor prisoner forsook by the world and friends fretted his sorrowful life 3. Here a lonely heart broke and a warren spirit went to its rest after 37 years of solitary captivity 4. Here homeless and friendless after 37 years of bitter captivity 4. Perished a noble stranger natural son of Louis 14. Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them and he most broke down when he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim to scrabble on to the wall they was also good but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on Jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail he didn't know how to make letters besides but Tom said he would block them out for him and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines then pretty soon he says come to think of it the logs ain't going to do they don't have log walls in a dungeon we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock we'll fetch a rock Jim said the rock was worse than the logs he said it would take him such a pys and long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't get out but Tom said he would let me help him do it then he took a look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pins it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores and we didn't seem to make no headway hardly so Tom says I know how to fix it we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions and we can kill two birds with that same rock there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill and we'll smooch it and carve the things on it and file out the pins and the saw on it too it weren't no slouch of an idea and it weren't no slouch of a grindstone another but we allowed we tackle it it weren't quite midnight yet so we cleared out for the mill leaving Jim at work we smooched the grindstone and set out to roll her home but it was a most nation tough job sometimes do what we could we couldn't keep her from falling over and she coming near mashing us every time Tom said she was going to get one of a shore before we got through we got her halfway and then we was plum played out and most grounded with sweat we see it weren't no use we got to go and fetch Jim so he raised up his bed and slid the chain off the bed leg and wrapped it round and round his neck and we crawled out through our hole and down there and Jim and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing and Tom super intended he could out super intend any boy I ever see he know how to do everything our hole was pretty big but it weren't big enough to get the grindstone through but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough then Tom marked out them things on it with the nail and set Jim to work on them with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the lean to for a hammer and told them to work till the rest of the handle quit on them and then he could go to bed and hide the grindstone under his straw tech and sleep on it then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed leg and was ready for bed ourselves but Tom thought of something and says you got any spiders in here Jim no sir thanks to goodness I hate Mars Tom all right we'll get you some but bless you honey I don't want none I was a feared on them Tom thought for a minute or two and says it's a good idea and I reckon it's been done it must have been done it stands to reason yes it's a prime good idea where could you keep it keep what Mars Tom why a rattlesnake the goodness gracious alive Mars Tom why if they was a rattlesnake to come in here I'd take and bust them right out through that log wall I would with my head why Jim you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little you could tame it tame it yes easy enough every animal is grateful for kindness and petting and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them any book will tell you that you try that's all I ask just try for two or three days why you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you and sleep with you and won't stay away from you for a minute and will let you wrap him around your neck and put his head in your mouth please Mars Tom don't talk so I can't stand it he let me shove his head in my mouth for a favor I ain't it I lay he'd wait a powerful long time for I asked him and more than that I don't want him to sleep with me Jim don't act so foolish a prisoner's got to have some kind of a dumb pet and if rattlesnake ain't ever been tried there's more glory to be gained and you're being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life well Mars Tom I don't want no such glory snake taken by Jim's chin off then where's the glory no sir I don't want no such doings blame it can't you try I only want you to try you need to keep it up if it don't work but the trouble all done if the snake bite me while I was trying them Mars Tom I was willing to tackle most anything it ain't unreasonable but if you and huck fetches a rattlesnake in here for me to tame I was going to leave that show well then let's go if you're so bullheaded about it we can get you some garter snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails and let on their rattlesnakes and I reckon that'll have to do I can stand them Mars Tom but believe me if I couldn't get along without him I'll tell you that I never know before it was so much bothering trouble to be a prisoner well it always is when it's done right you got any rats around here no sir I ain't seen none well we'll get you some rats why Mars Tom I don't want no rats they the dad blaming his creatures to stir up a body and rustle around over them and bite his feet while he's trying to sleep I ever see no sir give me yard of snakes if I's got to have them but don't give me no rats I ain't got no use for them scarcely but Jim you got to have them they all do so don't make no more fuss about it prisoners ain't ever without rats there ain't no instance of it and they train them pet them and they learn them tricks and they get to be as sociable as flies but you got to play music to them you got anything to play music on I ain't got nothing but a coast comb and a piece of paper and a juice hop but I reckon they wouldn't take no stock in a juice hop yes they would they don't care what kind of music it is a juice harps plenty good enough for a rat all animals like music in a prison they doad on it especially painful music and you can't get no other kind out of a juice harp it always interest them they come out to see what's the matter with you yes you're alright you're fixed very well you want to sit on your bed nights before you go to sleep and early in the mornings and play your juice harp play the last link is broken that's the thing that'll scoop a rat quicker than anything else and when you played about two minutes you'll see all the rats and the snakes and spiders and things they'll begin to feel worried about you and come and they'll just fairly swarm all over you and have a noble good time yes they will I reckon Mars Tom but what kind time is Jim having blessed if I can see the pint but I'll do it if I got to I reckon I better keep the animals satisfied and not have no trouble in the house Tom waited to think it over and see if there wasn't nothing else and pretty soon he says oh there's one thing I forgot could you raise a flower here do you reckon I don't know but maybe I could Mars Tom but it's tall but dark in here and I ain't got no use for no flower know how and she'd be a powerful side of trouble well you tried anyway some other prisoners has done it one of them big cat tail looking mulling stalks would grow in here Mars Tom I reckon but she wouldn't be worth half the trouble she'd cause don't you believe it will fetch you a little one and you planted in the corner over there and raise it and don't call it mulling stalks Petiola that's its right name when it's in a prison and you want to water it with your tears why I got plenty of spring water Mars Tom you don't want spring water you want to water it with your tears it's the way they always do why Mars Tom I lay I can raise one of them mulling stalks twice with spring water was another man starting one with tears that ain't the idea you got to do it with tears she'll die on my hands Mars Tom she surely will case I don't scarcely ever cry so Tom was stumped but he studied it over and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion he promised he would go to the niggers cabin and drop one private in Jim's coffee pot in the morning Jim said he would just soon have to back her in his coffee and found so much fault with it and with the work and bother of raising the mulling and Jews and then flattering up the snakes and spiders and things on top of all the other work he had to do on the pens and inscriptions and journals and things which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook that Tom most lost all patience with him and said he was just loading down with more godier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself and yet he didn't know what to expect about wasted on him so Jim said he was sorry and said he wouldn't behave so no more and then me and Tom shoved for bed. End of Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fen This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Adventures of Huckleberry Fen by Mark Twain Chapter 39 In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat trap and fetched it down and unstopped the best rat hole and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Ain't Sally's bed but while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Alexander Phelps found it there and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out and they did and Ain't Sally, she come in and when we got back she was a standing on top of the bed raising Cain and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her so she took and dusted us both with the hickory and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen and they weren't the likeliest because the first hole was the pick of the flock I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first hole was we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders and bugs and frogs and caterpillars and one thing or another and we like to got a hornest nest but we didn't, the family was at home we didn't give it right up but stayed with them as long as we could because we allowed we'd tire them out or they'd got to tire us out and they'd done it then we got alley campaign and rubbed it on the places and it was pretty near all right again but couldn't set down convenient and so we went for the snakes and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house snakes and put them in a bag and put it in our room and by that time it was supper time and a rattling good honest days work and hungry? oh no I reckon not and there weren't a blessed snake up there they half tied the sack and they worked out somehow and left but it didn't matter much because they were still on the premises somewhere so we judged we could get some of them again no there weren't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell you'd see them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then and they generally landed in your plate or down the back of your neck and most of the time where you didn't want them well they was handsome and striped no harm in a million of them but that never made no difference to Ann Sally she despised snakes be the breed what they might and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it and every time one of them flopped down on her it didn't make no difference what she was doing she would just lay that work down and light out I never see such a woman and you could hear her whooped Jericho you couldn't get her to take a hold of one of them with the tongs and in bed she would scramble out and lift the howl that you would think the house was a fire she disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there had never been no snakes created why? after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Ann Sally weren't over it yet she weren't near over it when she was sitting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of the neck and she would jump right out of her stockings it was very curious but Tom said all women was just so he said they was made that way for some reason or other we got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way and she allowed these lickens weren't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them I didn't mind the lickens because they didn't amount to nothing but I minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot but we got them laid in and all the other things and you never see a cabin as blossom as gems when they'd all swarm out for music and go for them Jim didn't like the spiders and the spiders didn't like Jim and so they'd lay for him and make it mighty warm for him and he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone there weren't no room in bed for him and when there was and it was always lively he said because they never all slept at one time but took turn about so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch so he always had one gang under him in his way and the other gang having a circus over him and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over he said that if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again not for a salary well by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape the shirt was sent in early in a pie and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh the pins was made the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone the bed leg was sawed in too and we had it up the sawdust and it give us a most amazing stomach ache we reckon we was all going to die but didn't it was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see and Tom said the same but as I was saying we'd got all the work done now at last and we was all pretty much fagged out too but mainly Jim the old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway nigger but hadn't got no answer because there weren't no such plantation so he allowed he would advertise Jim and the St. Louis and New Orleans papers and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones it give me the cold shivers and I see we had no time to lose so Tom said now for the anonymous letters what's them I says warnings to the people that something is up sometimes it's done one way sometimes another but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle when Louis 16 was going to light out of the tuleries a servant girl done it it's a very good way and so is the anonymous letters we'll use them both and it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with them and she stays in and he slides out in her clothes we'll do that too but look here Tom what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up let them find out for themselves it's their look out yes I know but you can't depend on them it's the way they've acted from the very start left us to do everything they're so confiding and mullet headed they don't take notice of nothing at all so if we don't give them notice there won't be nobody or nothing to interfere with us and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape will go off perfectly flat won't amount to nothing won't be nothing to it well as for me Tom that's the way I'd like shucks he says and looks disgusted so I says but I ain't gonna make no complaint anyway that suits you suits me what are you going to do about the servant girl you'll be her you'll slide in in the middle of the night and hook that yalla girls frog why Tom that'll make trouble next morning because of course you probably ain't got any but that one I know but you don't want it but 15 minutes to carry the anonymous letter and shove it under the front door all right then I'll do it but I could carry it just as handy in my own togs you wouldn't look like a servant girl then would you no but there won't be nobody to see what I look like anyway that ain't got nothing to do with it the thing for us to do is just to do our duty and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not and you got no principle at all all right I ain't saying nothing I'm the servant girl who's Jim's mother I'm his mother I'll hook again from ain't Sally well then you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves not much I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and laying in his bed to represent his mother in disguise and Jim will take the nigger woman's gown off of me and wear it and we'll all evade together when a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion it's always called so when a king escapes for instance and the same with the king's son it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one so Tom wrote the anonymous letter and I smooched the yellow inches frock that night and put it on and shoved it under the front door the way Tom told me to it said beware trouble is brewing keep a sharp lookout unknown friend next night we stuck a picture which Tom drawed in blood of a skull and crossbones on the front door and next night another one of a coffin on the back door I'd never see a family in such a sweat they couldn't have been worse scared if the place had been full of ghosts laying for him behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air if a door banged Aunt Sally she jumped and said ouch if anything fell she jumped and said ouch if you happen to touch her when she weren't noticing she'd done the same she couldn't face no way and be satisfied because she allowed there was something behind her every time so she was always whirling around sudden and saying ouch and before she got two thirds round she'd whirl back again and say it again and she was afraid to go to bed but she doesn't set up so the thing was working very well Tom said he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory he said it showed it was done right so he said now for the grand bulge so the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready and was wondering what we better do with it because we heard them say it supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night Tom he went down to the lightning rod to spy around and the nigger at the back door was asleep and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back this letter said don't betray me I wish to be your friend there is a desperate gang of cut from over in the Indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger tonight and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them I am one of the gang but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again and will betray the hellish design they will sneak down from the northerds along the fence at midnight exact with a false key and go in the door's cabin to get them I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger but instead of that I will by like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow it all then whilst they are getting his change loose you slip there and lock them in and can kill them at your leisure don't do anything but just the way I'm telling you if you do they will suspicion something and free who I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing unknown friend end of chapter 39