 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Notice. The Missouri Negro dialect. The extremist form of the Backwoods Southwestern dialect. The Ordinary Pike County dialect. And four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork, but painstakingly, and with a trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. The Author. Huckleberry Finn. Scene. The Mississippi Valley. Time. Forty to fifty years ago. Chapter 1. You don't know about me without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I'd never seen anybody but lied one time or another without it was Aunt Polly or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly. Tom's Aunt Polly, she is. And Mary and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now the way that book winds up is this. Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars a piece. All gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year round. More than a body could tell what to do with. The widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she was civilize me. But it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal, regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways. And so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar hogs head again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. The widow she cried over me, called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had a come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eatin', but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there weren't really anything to matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different. Things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better. After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bull rushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him. But by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time, so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people. Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me, but she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too. Of course that was all right, because she done it herself. Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't have stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry, and Don't scrunch up like that Huckleberry, set up straight. And pretty soon she would say, Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry, why don't you try to behave? Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres. All I wanted was a change. I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said, said she wouldn't say it for the whole world. She was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all the body would have to do there was to go round all day long with a harp and sing, for ever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. Miss Watson she kept packing at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle and put it on the table. Then I sat down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful, and I heard a now, a way off, hoo-hooin' about somebody that was dead, and a whipper-wheel and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die, and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run all over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night, grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle, and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times, and crossed my breast every time, and then I tied up a little lock in my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I had no confidence. You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you found instead of nailing it over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you killed a spider. I sat down again, a shake and all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke, for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom, boom, boom, twelve legs, and all still again, stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees. Something was a-stirring. I sat still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a meow, meow, down there. That was good. Says I, meow, meow, as soft as I could. And then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and sure enough there was time Sawyer waiting for me. End of chapter. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 2 We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root, made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim, was satting in the kitchen door. We could see him pretty clear because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute listening. Then he says, Who da? He listened some more. Then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us. We could have touched him nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there watered a sound, and we all there so close together. There was place on my ankle that got the itching, but I'd dashing scratch it, and then my ear begun to itch. And next my back, right between my shoulders, seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty time since. If you are with a quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy, if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over and upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says, Say, who is you? Where is you? Dog my cats if I didn't hear something. Well, I knows what I's going to do. I's going to sit down here and listen till I hears it again. So he sat down on the ground and pricks me and Tom. He leaned his back up against the tree, and stretched his legs out to one of the most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes, but I'd dashing scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn't know how I was going to sit still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes, but it seemed to site longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more than a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard, and got ready to try. Just then Jim began to breathe heavy. Next he began to snore, and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom he made a sign to me, kind of a little noise with his mouth, and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no. He might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I weren't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to risk it. So we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away, but nothing would do Tom he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while. Everything was so still and lonesome. As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head, and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but it didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who'd done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans, and after that every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it. He was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wanderer. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire, but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things Jim would happen in and say, hmm, what you know about witches? And that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-centre piece around his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it, and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it. But he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-centre piece, but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked way down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there were sick folks maybe, and the stars over us were sparkling ever so fine, and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old ten-yard, so we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two-mile-and-a-half to the big scar on the hillside and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two-hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't have noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says, Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood. Everybody was willing, so Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band and never tell any of the secrets, and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat, and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was a sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued, and if he'd done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books and robber books and every gang that was high toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says, Here's Huck Finn, he ain't got no family, what are you going to do about him? Well, ain't he got a father? said Tom Sawyer. Oh yeah, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days, he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he ain't been seen in these parts for a year or more. They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do. Everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry, but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson, they could kill her. Everybody said, Oh, she'll do, that's all right, I could come in. Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper. Now, says Ben Rogers, what's the line of business of this gang? Nothing only robbery and murder, Tom said. But who are going to rob, houses, or cattle, or stuff, stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary, says Tom Sawyer. We ain't burglars, that ain't no sort of style, we are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money. Must we always kill the people? Oh, certainly, it's past. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them, except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed. Ransomed, what's that? I don't know, but that's what they do. I seen it in books, and so of course that's what we gotta do. But how can we do it if we don't know what it is? Why, blame it all we got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go doing different from what's in the books and get things all muddled up? Oh, that's very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? That's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is? Well, I don't know, but perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead. Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death, and a bothersome lot they'll be too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose. How you talk, Ben Rogers? How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg? A guard? Well, that is good. So somebody's gotta set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here? Because it ain't in the books, so that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular? Or don't you? That's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn them anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way. All right, I don't mind, but I say it's a full way anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too? Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you, I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No. Nobody ever said anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them, and by and by they fall in love with you. You never want to go home any more. Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Might as soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellas waiting to be ransom. There won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say. Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared and cried and said he wanted to go home to his maw and didn't want to be a robber no more. So they all made fun of him and called him crybaby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom gave him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday, but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix the day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer, first captain, and Joe Harper, second captain of the gang, and so started home. I clumped up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayy, and I was dog-tired. End of chapter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Chapter 3 Well, I got a good going over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes, but the widow, she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could. Then Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. If it weren't so, I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't no good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try it for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way. I sat down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they prayed for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver snuff-box that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fad up? No, says I to myself. They ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts. This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant. I must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself. This was including Miss Watson as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it, except for the other people. So at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water, but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was going to be any better off than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low down in ornery. Papp he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me. I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always wail me when he was sober and could get his hands on me, though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river Drounded about twelve miles above town, so people said. They judged it was him anyway, said this Drounded man was just his size and was ragged and had uncommon long hair, which was all like Papp, but that could make nothing out of the face because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I warn't comfortable long because I happen to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a Drounded man don't float on his back but on his face, so I knowed then that this warn't Papp but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes, so I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts, taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs ingots, and he called the turnips and stuff jewelry, and we would go to the cave and pow-wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan, which was the sign for the gang to get together, and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich air-abs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants and six hundred camels, and over a thousand sumpter mules, all loaded down with diamonds, and he didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so he would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready. We never could go after even a turnip cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they were only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour out them till you rotted, and then they weren't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such crowd as Spaniards and air-abs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade, and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill, but there weren't no Spaniards and air-abs, and there weren't no camels nor no elephants. You weren't anything but a Sunday school picnic, and only a primer class at that. We busted it up, chased the children up the holla, but we never got anything but some donuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in, and he made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there anyway, and he said there was air-abs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them then? He said if I weren't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants, and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school just out of spite. I said, all right. Then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numbskull. Why, said he, a magician would call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree, and as big around as a church. Well, I says, suppose we got some genies to help us. Can't we lick the other crowd then? How are you going to get them? I don't know. How do they get them? Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning, and ripping around, and the smoke rolling, and everything they're told to do, they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday school superintendent over the head with it, or any other man. Who makes them tear around so? Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of diamonds, and fill it full of chewing gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they got to do it. And they got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more, they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand. Well, says I. I think they are back of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves, instead of fooling them away like that. And what's more, if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp. How you talk, Huck Finn? Why, you'd have to come when he rubbed it whether you wanted to or not. What, an eye as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right then, I would come, but I'd lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country. Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know anything, somehow. Perfect sap-head! I thought all this over for two or three days. Then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an engine, calculating to build a palace and sell it. But it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-Rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. He had had all the marks of a Sunday school. End of chapter. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 4 Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write, just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hooky, and the heighten I got next day done me good and cheered me up, so the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they weren't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight, mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow, but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she wanted ashamed of me. One morning I happened to turn over the salt cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me and crossed me off. She says, Take your hands away, Huckleberry! What a mess you are always making! The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren't going to keep off the bad luck I knowed that well enough. I started out after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind, so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along, low spirited and on the watch out. I went down to the front garden and clump over the style where you go through the highboard fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen somebodies tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the style a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in after standing around, so I couldn't make it out. It was very curious somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails to keep off the devil. I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said, Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest? No, sir, I says. Is there some for me? Oh, yes. A half-yearly is in last night. Over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You'd better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it, you'll spend it. No, sir, I says. I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all. Nor the six thousand another. I want you to take it. I want to give it to you. The six thousand and all. He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says, Why, what can you mean, my boy? I says, Don't you ask no questions about it, please. You'll take it, won't you? He says, Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter? Please take it, says I, and don't ask me nothing. Then I won't have to tell no lies. He studied a while, and then he says, Oh, I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me. Not give it. That's the correct idea. Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over and says, There, you see it says for consideration. That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it. So I signed it and left. Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him Pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was what he was going to do, and was he going to stay. Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use. He said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I had an old, slick, counterfeit quarter that warn't no good, because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass, no how, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge. I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it, and bit it, and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between, and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I know the potato would do that before, but I had forgot it. Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says, Your old father don't know yet what he's going to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go away, and then again he spec he'll stay. The best way is to rest easy, and let the old man take his own way. There's two angels hovering round about him. One of them is white and shiny, and the other one is black. The white one gets him to go right a little while, then the black one sail in and bust it all up. A body can't tell you which one going to fetch him out to last, but you is all right. You're going to have considerable trouble in your life, and considerable joy. Sometimes you're going to get hurt, and sometimes you're going to get sick, but every time you're going to get well again. There's two gals flying about you in your life. One of them is light, and the other one is dark. One is rich, and the other is poor. You're going to marry the poor one first, and the rich one by and by. You're wants to keep away from the water as much as you can, and don't run no risk, because it's down in the bills that you's going to get hung. When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there sat Papp, his own self. End of chapter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 5 I had shut the door too. Then I turned around, and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time. He tamed me so much. I reckoned I was scared now, too, but in a minute I see I was mistaken. That is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sorta hitched, he being so unexpected. But right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth bothering about. He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray. So was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face where his face showed. It was white, not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl, a tree-toed white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes, just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on the other knee. The boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor, an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. I stood a-looking at him. He sat there a-looking at me, with his chair till the back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up, so he had clumped in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By-and-by, he says, Starchy clothes, very. You think you're a good deal of a big bug, don't you? Maybe I am, maybe I ain't, I says. Don't you give me none of your lip, says he. You put on considerable many frills since I've been away. I take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say, can read and write. You think you're better than your father now, don't you, because he can't. I'll take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such highfalutin' foolishness, hey? Who told you you could? The widow. She told me. The widow, hey, and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business? Nobody never told her. Well, I'll learn her how to meddle, and looky here. You dropped at school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father, and let on to be bettering what he is. You let me catch you fool around at school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, she couldn't write another, before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died. I can't. And here you are swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it. You hear? Say, let me hear you read. I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I'd read about half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says, it's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now, looky here. You stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty, and if I catch you about that school, I'll tend you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never seen such a son. He took up a little blue and yowler picture of some cows and a boy and says, what's this? It's something they give me for learning my lessons good. He tore it up and says, I'll give you something better. I'll give you a cow-hide. He sat there a mumbling and a growl in a minute, and then he says, ain't you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed, embed clothes, and a looking-glass, and a piece of carpet on the floor, and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet I'll take some of these frills out of you before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no end to your heirs. They say you're rich. Hey, how's that? They lie, that's how. Looky here, mind how you talk to me. I'm a-standard about all I can stand now, so don't give me no sass. I've been in town two days, and I ain't heard nothing but about you being rich. I heard about it a way down the river, too. That's why I come. You get me that money tomorrow. I want it. I ain't got no money. It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You get it. I want it. I ain't got no money, I tell ya. You ask Judge Thatcher. He'll tell you the same. All right. I'll ask him, and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket. I want it. I ain't got only a dollar, and I want that to—it don't make no difference what you want it for. You just shell it out. He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going downtown to get some whiskey. Said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him. And when I reckon he was gone, he come back and put his head in again and told me to mind about that school because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop that. Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bully-ragged him and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him. The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian. But it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man. So he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it. Said he'd rather not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher and Pap took it and got drunk and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on. And he kept it up all over town with a tin pan till most midnight. Then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied, said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. When he got out the new judge said he was going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house and dressed him up clean and nice and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with a family and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life. But now he was going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words, so he cried, and his wife she cried again. Pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so, so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand and says, Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all, take a hold of it, shake it. There's a hand that was a hand of a hog, but it ain't so no more. It's the hand of a man that started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words, don't forget I said them. It's clean hand now, shake it, don't be afeard. So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge, made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty, and clumped out on to the porch-roof, and slid down a stanchion, and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumped back again and had a good old time. And towards daylight he crawled out again drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two pieces, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it. The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. End of chapter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By Mark Twain. Chapter 6 Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money. And he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckon I'd go now to spite-pap. That law-trial was a slow business. Appeared like they weren't ever going to get started on it, so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him to keep from getting a cow hiding. Every time he got money he got drunk. And every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town. And every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited. This kind of thing was right in his line. He got to hangin' round the widows too much, and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit usin' around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring and catched me and took me up the river about three miles in a skiff, crossed over to Illinois's shore where it was woody, and there warn't no houses, but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. He lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head, nice. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whiskey, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but Pap drove him off with a gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to being where I was and liked it, all but that cow-hide part. It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widows, where you had to wash and eat on a plate and comb up and go to bed and get up regular and be forever bothering over a book, and have Ole Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing because the widow didn't like it, but now I took to it again because Pap had no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there. Take it all around. But by and by Pap got too handy with his hickory, and I couldn't stand it. I was all over-welts. He got to go on away so much too and lockin' me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned in, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There weren't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly. It was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away. I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times. Well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only thing to put in the time. But this time I found something at last. I found an old rusty wood saw without any handle. It was laid in between a rafter and the clappards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard Pap's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon Pap come in. Pap warned in a good humour, so he was his natural self. He said he was downtown and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started up on the trial. But then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up considerable because I didn't want to go back to the widows any more and be so cramped up and civilised, as they called it. Then the old man got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any. And after that he polished off with a kind of general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's his name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing. He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him they'd know to have a place six or seven miles off to stow me in where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute. I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of cornmeal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a full gallon of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding beside some towel. I towed it up a load, and went back and sat down in the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with a gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night-times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if Pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or grounded. I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper, the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. Body would have thought he was Adam, he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the government, and this time he says, Call this a government, why just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law, standing ready to take a man's son away from him, a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do something for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him, and they call that government. That ain't all another. The law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out of my property. Here's what the law does. The law takes a man worth $6,000 an upwards and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitting for a hog. They call that government. A man can't get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I got a mighty notion of just leave the country for good in all. Yes, and I told him so. I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of them heard me and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blame country and never come near it again. Them's the very words. I says, look at my hat, if you call it a hat, but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a joint of stove-pipe. Look at it, says I. Such a hat for me to wear, one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could get my rights. Oh, yes, this is a wonderful government. Wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio. A moolatter. Most as wide as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat. And there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had. And he had a gold watch and chain and a silver-headed cane. The offless old gray-headed nabob in the state. And what do you think? They said he was a professor in a college and could talk all kinds of languages and knowed everything. And that ain't the worst. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country coming to? It was election day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I weren't too drunk to get there. But when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I draw it out. I says I'll never vote again. Them's the very words I said. They all heard me, and the country may rot for all me. I'll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger? Why, he wouldn't have give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out of the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold? That's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There now, that's a specimen. They call that a government that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. Here's a government that calls itself a government and lets on to be a government and thinks it is a government and yet's got to sit stock still for six whole months before it can take hold of a prowlin', thievin', infernal, white-shirted, free nigger, and— Papp was a-going on, so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to. So he went head over heels over the tub of salt-pork and bark both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language. Mostly hove at the nigger and the government, though he gave the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin, considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out the front end of it, so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt and rolled there and held his toes, and the cussing he'd done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard an old salbury hagin in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too, but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. After supper Papp took the jug and said he had enough whiskey there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key or saw myself out one or the other. He drank and drank and tumbled down on his blankets by and by, but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed about this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep and the candle burning. I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was Papp looking wild and skipping about every which way and yelling about snakes. He said there was crawling up his legs and then he would give a jump and scream and say one had bit him on the cheek, but I couldn't see no snakes. He started and run around and around the cabin hollering, Take him off! Take him off! He's biting me on the neck! I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out and fell down panting. Then he rolled over and over a wonderful fast, kicking things every which way and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands and screaming and saying there was devils a hold of him. He wore out by and by and laid still a while moaning. Then he laid stiller and didn't make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods that seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened with his head to one side. He says very low trap, trap, trap. That's the dead. Trap, trap, trap. They're coming after me, but I won't go. Oh, they're here. Don't touch me. Don't. Hands off. They're cold. Let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone. Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone. And he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine-table, still a-begging, and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket. By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death and saying he would kill me and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged and told him I was only a huck, but he laughed such a screechy laugh and roared and cast and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone. But I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out and dropped down with his back against the door and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him and said he would sleep and get strong and then he would see who was who. So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair and clumped up as easy as I could not to make any noise and got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded. Then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards Papp and sat down behind it to wait for him to stir and how slow and still the time did drag along and a chapter. Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 7 Get up! What's you about? I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up and I had been sound asleep. Papp was standing over me looking sour and sick too. He says, What you do with his gun? I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says. Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him. Why didn't you rouse me out? Well, I tried to, but I couldn't. I couldn't budge you. Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a minute. He unlocked the door and I cleared out up the river bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down and a sprinkling of bark, so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me, because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down and pieces of log rafts, sometimes a dozen logs together. So all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill. I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and the other one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe, just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, close and all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected that it be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool, folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it, they'd raise up and laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift canoe, sure enough, and I clummed in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I. The old man will be glad when he sees this. She's worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore, Pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea. I judged I'd hide her good, and then, instead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty miles and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time trampin' on foot. It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time, but I got her head. And then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path apiece just drawin' a bead on a bird with his gun, so he hadn't seen anything. When he got along I was hard at it takin' up a trot line. He abused me a little for bein' so slow, but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. I know'd he would see I was wet, and then he would be askin' questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home. While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us bein' about war out, I got to thinkin' that if I could fix up some way to keep Pap and the widow from tryin' to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trustin' to luck to get far enough off before they missed me. You see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn't see no way for a while, but I'm by Pap raises up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says, Another time a man comes prowlin' round here. You rouse me out, you hear? That man warn't hear for no good. I'da shot him. Next time you rouse me out, you hear? Then he dropped down and went to sleep again. But what he had been sayin' gave me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so nobody won't think of followin' me. About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was comin' up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood goin' by on the rise. By and by long comes part of a log raft, nine logs fast together. We went out with a skiff and towed to the shore. Then we had dinner. Anybody but Pap would've waited and seen the day through so as to catch more stuff. But that warn't Pap's style. Nine logs was enough for one time. He must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in, took the skiff, started off towing the raft about half past three. I judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start. Then I out with my saw and went to work on that log again. Before he was the other side of the river, I was out of the hole. Him and his raft was just a speck on the water, way off yonder. I took the sack of cornmeal and took it to where the canoe was head, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in. Then I done the same with the side of bacon. Then the whiskey jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition. I took the wadding. I took the bucket and gourd. I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee pot. I took fish lines and matches and other things, everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any. Only the one out at the wood pile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done. I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place and put two rocks under it and worn against it to hold it there, before it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch ground. If you stood four or five feet away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't ever notice it. And besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it weren't likely anybody would go fooling around there. It was all grass cleared to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. I followed around to sea. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig. Hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. I shot this fella and took him into camp. I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerable of doing it. I fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe and laid him down on the ground to bleed. I say ground because it was ground, hard-packed, no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it, all like a drag. And I started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and threw the woods down to the river and dumped it in. And down it sunk out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there. I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that. Well, last I pulled out some of my hair and blooded the axe good and stuck it on the back side and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket so he couldn't drip till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with a saw for the warrant-known knives and forks on the place papped on everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes and ducks, too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough for a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped Papp's whetstone there, too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string so it wouldn't leak no more and took it and my saw to the canoe again. It was about dark now, so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow, then I took a bite to eat and by and by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me, and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that and won't bother no more about me. All right, I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson's Island is good enough for me. I know that island pretty well. Nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson Island's the place. I was pretty tired and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could have counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet. And it looked late and smelt late. You know what I mean. I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in roadlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches and there it was, a skiff away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept coming and when it was abreast of me I see there weren't but one man in it. Thinks I. Maybe it's PAP, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the current and by and by he come a swinging up shore in the easy water. I was so close I could have reached out the gun and touched him. Well it was PAP, sure enough and sober too by the way he laid his oars. I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a spinning downstream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half and then struck out a quarter a mile or more towards the middle of the river because pretty soon I would be passing the fairy-landing and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe looking away into the sky, not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine. I never noted before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights. I heard people talking at the fairy-landing. I heard what they said too, every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. Each other one said this warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned, and then they laughed and he said it over again and they laughed again. Then they waked up another fellow and told him and laughed. But he didn't laugh. He ripped out something brisk on his own. The first fellow said he allowed him to tell it to his old woman. She would think it was pretty good. But he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away and I couldn't make out the words any more. But I could hear the mumble half-two but seemed a long ways off. I was away below the ferry now. I rose up and there was Jackson's Island about two mile and a half downstream, heavy-timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights. There weren't any signs of the bar at the head. It was all under water now. It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate. The current was so swift. And then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about. I had to part the willow branches to get in. And when I made fast nobody could have seen the canoe from the outside. I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river in driftwood and a way over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights at Twinkland. A monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile upstream coming along down with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, Stirnor's there, he ever had destabbered. I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now, so I stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast. End of chapter. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 8 The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade, thinking about things, and feeling rested and rather comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about and gloomy in there amongst them. There were freckled places on the shore where the light sifted down through the leaves and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. I was powerful, lazy, and comfortable. Didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I think I hear a deep sound of, boom, a way up the river. I rouses up, rests on my elbow and listens. Pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up, about abreast the ferry. And there was the ferry boat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. Boom! I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry boat side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. I was pretty hungry, but it weren't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. So I sat there and watched the cannon smoke and listened to the boom. The river was mile wide there and it always looks pretty on a summer morning. So I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drowned carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a look out and if any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have and I warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along and I most got it with a long stick, put my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course I was where the current sat in the closest to the shore. I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver and set my teeth in. It was baker's bread, what the quality eat, none of your low down calm-pwn. I got a good place amongst the leaves and sat there on a log munching the bread and watching the ferry boat and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me and here it is gone and done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays but it don't work for me and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. The ferry boat was floating with a current and I allowed I'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she came along because she would come in close where the bread did. When she got pretty well along down towards me I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along and she drifted in so close that they could have run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap and Judge Thatcher and Bessie Thatcher and Joe Harper and Tom Sawyer and his old Aunt Polly and Sid and Mary and plenty more. Everybody was talking about the murder but the captain broke in and says Look sharp now. The current sets in the closest here and maybe he's washed a shore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I hope so, anyway. I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails nearly in my face and kept still watching with all their might. I could see them first-rate but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out Stand away! And the cannon left off such a blast right before me that it made me deep with a noise and pretty near blind with a smoke and I judged I was gone. If they'd had some bullets in I reckon they'd have got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt thanks to goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming now and then further and further off and by and by after an hour I didn't hear it no more. The island was three miles long. I judged they got to the foot and was giving it up but they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side under steam and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and hopped over to Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw and towards sundown I started my campfire with my head supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. When it was dark I set by my campfire smoking and feeling pretty well satisfied but by and by it got sort of lonesome and so I went and sat on the bank and listened to the current swashing along and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down and then went to bed. There ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome. You can't stay so you soon get over it. And so for three days and nights no difference just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it. It all belonged to me so to say and I wanted to know all about it. But mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime and green summer grapes and green raspberries and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by I judged. Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along but I hadn't shot nothing. It was for protection. I thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time a muddy nurse stepped on a good-sized snake and went sliding off through the grass and flowers and I after it trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a campfire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and put my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I slunk along another piece further then listened again and so on and so on. If I see a stump I took it for a man. If I tried on a stick and broke it it made me feel like a person that cut one of my breaths into and I only got half and the short half too. When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash. There's not much sand in my crawl but I says this ain't no time to be fooling around so I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours but I didn't see nothing. I didn't hear nothing. I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things well I couldn't stay up there forever so at last I got down but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry so when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank about a quarter of a mile I went out in the woods and cooked a supper and had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk and says to myself, horse is coming and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into my canoe as quick as I could and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say we better camp here if we can find a good place the horses is about beat out let's look around. I didn't wait but shoved out and paddled away easy I tied up in the old place and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe I didn't sleep much I couldn't somehow for thinking and every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck so the sleep didn't do me no good by and by I says to myself I can't live this way I'm going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me I'll find it out or bust well I felt better right off so I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows the moon was shining and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day I poked along well on to an hour everything still is rocks and sound asleep well by this time I was most down to the foot of the island a little ripply cool breeze begun to blow and that was as good as saying the night was about done I give return with a paddle and brunger nose to shore then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods I sat down there on the log and looked out through the leaves I see the moon go off watch and the darkness begin to blanket the river but in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops and no the day was coming so I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that campfire stopping every minute or two to listen but I hadn't no luck somehow I couldn't seem to find the place but by and by sure enough I catch the glimpse of fire away through the trees I went for it cautious and slow by and by I was close enough to have a look there laid a man on the ground it most give me the phantots he had a blanket round his head and his head was nearly in the fire I sat there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him and kept my eyes on him steady it was getting grey daylight now pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket and it was Miss Watson's Jim I bet I was glad to see him I says, hello Jim and skipped out he bounced up instead at me wild then he drops down on his knees and puts his hands together and says don't hurt me, don't I ain't never done no harm to a ghost I always liked dead people and done all I could for them you go and get into river again well you belongs and don't do nothing to old Jim at as always your friend well I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead I was ever so glad to see Jim I warn't lonesome now I told him I warn't afraid of him telling the people where I was I talked along but he only sat there and looked at me and said nothing then I says it's good daylight, let's get breakfast make up your campfire good what's the use of making up the campfire to cook strawberries in such truck but you got a gun, ain't ya then we can get some from better than strawberries strawberries in such truck I says is that what you live on I couldn't get nothing else he says how long you been on the island Jim I come here to not out to use kill what all that time yes indeedy and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbish to eat no sigh, nothing else well you must be most starved ain't ya I reckon I could eat a horse I think I could how long you been on to island since the night I got killed no why, what has you lived on but you got a gun oh yes, you got a gun that's good now you kill something and I'll make up the fire so we went over to where the canoe was and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees I fetched meal and bacon and coffee and coffee pot and frying pan and sugar and tin cups and the nigger was set back considerable because he reckon it was all done with witchcraft I catched a good big catfish too and Jim cleaned him with his knife and fried him when breakfast was ready we lulled on the grass and ate it smokin' hot Jim laid it in with all his might while he was most about starved then when we got pretty well stuffed we laid off and lasied by and by Jim says but looky here, Huck who was it that was killed in that shanty if it weren't you then I told him the whole thing and he said it was smart he said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had then I says how do you come to be here Jim how'd you get here he looked pretty uneasy didn't say nothing for a minute then he says maybe I better not tell why Jim well there's reasons but you wouldn't tell on me if I was to tell you would you Huck blame to find wood Jim well I believe you Huck I I run off Jim but mine you said you wouldn't tell you know you said you wouldn't tell Huck well I did you wouldn't and I'll stick to it honest engine I will people would call me a low down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum but that don't make no difference I ain't a going to tell and I ain't a going back there anyways so now let's know all about it well you see it is this way old Mrs. that's Miss Watson she pecks on me all the time pretty rough but she always said she wouldn't sell me down to Orleans but I noticed there was a negator around the place considerable lately and I begin to get on easy well one night I creeps to the pretty late and the door won't quite shut and I hear old Mrs. tell the widow she go on sell me down to Orleans but she didn't want to $500 for me and it is such a big stack of money she couldn't resist the widow she try to get her to say she wouldn't do it but I never waited to hear the rest I lit out mighty quick I tell you I took out and shinned down the hill and specter steal a skift along the shore some was above the town but there was people are stirring yet so I hid in the old tumble down on the bank to wait for everybody to go away well I was there all night there was somebody around all the time long about six in the morning skifts begin to go by in about eight or nine every skift that went long was talking about how your pap come over to the town to say you's killed these last skifts was full of ladies and gentlemen going over for the seat of place sometimes they pull up at the shore and take a rest before they started across so by the talk I got to know all about the killing I was a powerful saw you's killed Huck but I ain't no more now I laid there under the shavings all day I was hungry but I want to fear it cause I know old Mrs and the widow was going to start to the camp meeting right after breakfast and be gone all day she knows I goes off with the cattle about daylight so they wouldn't expect to see me round the place and so they wouldn't miss me till after dark in the evening the other servants wouldn't miss me cause they'd shun out and take holiday soon as the old folks was out of the way well when it come dark I took out up the river road and went about two mile or more to where they want no houses I made up my mind about what I was going to do you see if I kept on trying to get away a foot the dogs would track me if I stole a skiff to cross over they'd missed that skiff you see and they'd know about where I land on the other side and where to pick up my track so I says a raft is what I was after it don't make no track I see a light coming round the point by and by I weighed in and shoved a log ahead of me and swum on half way across the river and got in amongst the driftwood and kept my head down low and kinda swum again to current till the raft come along then I swum to the stern of it and took a hold it clouded up and it was pretty dark for a little while so I clumped up and laid down on the planks the men is all way yonder in the middle where the lantern was the river was arising and there was a good current and I reckoned that by four in the morning I'd be a twenty five mile down the river and then I'd slip in just full daylight and swim ashore and take to the woods on the Illinois side but I didn't have no luck when we is most down to the head of the island a man begins to come after with the lantern and I see it won't no use for the weight so I slid overboard and struck out for the island well I had a notion I could land most anyways but I couldn't bank to bluff and I was most to the foot of the island before I found a good place I went into the woods and judged I wouldn't fool with rafts no more long as they moved the lantern round so I had my pipe and a plug and a dog leg and some matches in my cap so I was all right and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time why didn't you get mud turtles how you going to get them you can't slip up on them and grab them and how the body going to get them with a rock how could the body do it in tonight and I weren't going to show myself on the bank in the day time well that's so you've had to keep in the woods all the time of course I'm shooting the cannon oh yes I know day was out to you I see him go by here watch them through the bushes some young birds come along flying a yard or two at a time and light him Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it I was going to catch some of them but he wouldn't let me he said it was death he said his father laid mighty sick once and some of them catched a bird and his old granny said his father would die and he did and Jim said you mustn't count the things you're going to cook for dinner because that would bring bad luck the same if you shook this tablecloth after sundown and he said that if a man owned a beehive and that man died the bees must be told about it up next mornin' or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots but I didn't believe that because I had tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me I had heard about some of these things before but not all of them Jim note all kinds of signs he said he knew most everything I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck and so I asked him if there weren't any good luck signs he says might a few and they ain't no use to a body what you want to know when good lucks are coming for want to keep it off and he said if you's got hairy arms and a hairy breast it's a sign that you's are going to be rich well there's some use in a sign like that cause it's so fur ahead you see maybe you's got to be poor a long time first and so you might get discouraged and kill yourself if you didn't know by the sign that you're going to be rich by and by have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast Jim what's to use to ask that question don't you see I has well are you rich no but I've been rich once and going to be rich again once I had fourteen dollars but I took the speculating and got busted out what did you speculate in Jim well first I tackled stock what kind of stock why live stock cattle you know I put ten dollars in a cow but I ain't going to risk no more money in stock to cow up and died on my hands so you lost the ten dollars no I didn't lose it all I only lost about nine of it I sold a hide and tower for a dollar and ten cents you had five dollars and ten cents left did you speculate any more yes you know that one-legged nigger that belongs to old Mr. Braddish well he sought up a bank and say anybody that put in a dollar would get four dollars more at the end of the year well all the niggers went in but they didn't have much I was the only one that had much so I stuck out for more than four dollars and I said if I didn't get it I'd start a bank myself well of course that nigger want to keep me out of the business because he says they won't business enough for two banks so he say I could put in my five dollars and he pay me thirty five at the end of the year so I done it then I recognized best the thirty five dollars right off keep things are moving there was a nigger named Bob that had catch the wood flat and his master didn't know it and I bought it off him and told him to take the thirty five dollars when the end of the year come but somebody stole the wood flat that night and next day the one-legged nigger say the banks busted so they didn't none of us get no money what did you do with the ten cents Jim well I was going to spend it but I had a dream and a dream told me to give it to a nigger named Balham Balham's ass they call him for short he's one of them chuckleheads you know but he's lucky they say and I see I weren't lucky the dream sale it Balham invested ten cents and he'd make a raise for me well Balham he took the money and when he was in church he had a preacher say whoever give to the poor lent to the Lord and bound to get his money back a hundred times so Balham he took and give the ten cents to the poor and laid low to see what was going to come of it well what did come of it Jim nothing ever come of it I could manage to collect that money no way and Balham he couldn't I ain't going to lend no more money doubt I see the security bound to get your money back a hundred times the preacher says if I could get the ten cents back I'd call it square and be glad of the chance well it's all right anyway Jim long as you're going to be rich again sometime or other yes and I's rich now come to look at it I owns myself and I's worth eight hundred dollars I wish I had the money I wouldn't want no more and a chapter