 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 9 I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I had found when I was exploring, so we started and soon got to it because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, and at the sides were so steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumped around all over it, and by and by I found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top of the side towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool and dare. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time. Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place and had all the traps in the cavern we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island and they would never find us without dogs. And besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain and did I want the things to get wet. So we went back and got the canoe and paddled up or breast the cavern and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the lines and set them again and began to get ready for dinner. The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hog's head in and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner. We spread the blankets inside for a carpet and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up, begun to thunder and lighten. So the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of them regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside and lovely. The rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby. And here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves. And then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to toss in their arms as if they were just wild. And next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest, it was as bright as glory. And you'd have a little glimpse of treetops plunging about a way off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before. Dark has sent again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the underside of the world, like rolling empty barrels downstairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. Jim, this is nice, I says. I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread. Well, you wouldn't have been here if it hadn't have been for Jim. You'd have been down there in the woods without any dinner, and get most drowned in, too. That you would, honey. Chickens know when it's going to rain and so do the birds, child. The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The water was three or four feet deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across a half a mile, because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs. Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things, and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to, but not the snakes and turtles, they would slide off in the water. The ridge our cabin was in was full of them. We could have had pets enough if we had wanted them. One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft, nice pine planks. It was twelve foot wide, about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches, a solid level floor. We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go. We didn't show ourselves in daylight. Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame house down on the west side. She was a two-storey and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard, clumped in an upstairs window, but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. The light began to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we looked in at the window. We could make out a bed and a table and two old chairs and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says, Hello, you! But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says, The man ain't asleep. He dead. You whole still. I'll go and see. He went, bent down, and looked and says, It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy. Naked, too. He'd been shot in the back. I reckon he'd been dead two or three days. Come in, Huck, but don't look at his face. It's too cashly. I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he didn't have done it. I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered round over the floor, and old whiskey bottles and a couple of masks made out of black cloth. And all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses and a sunbond, and some woman's underclothes hanging against the wall and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe, it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor, I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had milk in it, and it had a rag stop before a baby to suck. We could have took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest and an old hair-trunk where the hinges broke. They stood open, but there was nothing left in them that was any account. The way things were scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and weren't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff. We got an old tin lantern and a butcher knife without any handle, and a brand new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tala candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bedquill off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them, and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curriculum, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of it, but bar and that it was good enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hutted all around. And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to shove off we was a quarter mile below the island, and it was a pretty broad day, so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with a quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and had no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe. CHAPTER X After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad luck, and besides, he said, he might come and haunt us. He said a man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-haunting around than one that was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't say no more, but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I'd know'd who shot the man and what they'd done it for. We rummaged the clothes we got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat. Because if they'd had known the money was there, they wouldn't have left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, too, but Jim didn't want to talk about that. I says, Now you think it's bad luck, but what did you say when I fetched in the snakeskin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snakeskin with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck. We've wrecked in all this trucking, eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim. Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you get to purr it. It's a-coming. Mind I tell you it's a-coming. It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge and got out a tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him and curled him up on the foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when Jim found him there. Well by night I forgot all about the snake and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light, the snake's mate was there and bit him. He jumped up yelling and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed Paph's whisky jug and began to pour it down. He was barefooted and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. I'd done it and he'd eat it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. He said that would help. Then I slid out quiet and threw the snake's clear way amongst the bushes, for I warn't going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it. Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled, but every time he come to himself he went to suckin' at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg, but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right, but I'd rather been bit with a snake than Pap's whiskey. Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a hold of a snake's skin again with my hands, now that I seen what had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time, and he said that handling the snake's skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet. He said he'd rather see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake's skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I was always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once and bragged about it, and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a lair, as you may say, and they slid him edgewise between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way like a fool. Well, the days went along and the river went down between its banks again, and about the first thing we'd done was debate one of the big hooks with a skin rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him, of course. He would have flung us into Illinois. We just sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned it. Jim found a brass button in his stomach, and a round ball, and lots of rubbish. We split the ball open with a hatchet, and there was a spoon in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, decoded over so and make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as ever was catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He would have been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there, and everybody buys some of them. His meats as white as snow and makes a good fry. Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stir-in-up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion, but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I put on some of those old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stovepipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them. Only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl, and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches pocket. I took notice and done better. I started up the Illinois shore and the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the fairy landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty-year-old in there, knit and buy candle that was on a pine table. I didn't know her face. She was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know. Now this was lucky, because I was weakening. I was getting afraid I had come. People might know my voice and find me out. But if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know. So I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl. 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 XI. Come in, says the woman, and I did. She says, take a cheer. I done it. She looked me all over with a little shiny eyes, and says, What might your name be? Sarah Williams. Where about you live, in this neighborhood? No. In Hookerville, seven miles below. I've walked all the way, and I'm all tired out. Hungry too, I reckon. I'll find you something. No, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at a farm. But I ain't hungry no more. It's what make me so late. My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything. And I come to tell my Uncle Abner more. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I ain't ever been here before. Do you know him? No, but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two weeks. It's considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet. No, I says. I'll rest awhile, I reckon, and go on. I ain't a fear to the dark. She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in an hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to be, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of letting well alone, and so on and so on. Till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town. But by and by she dropped on to Pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars, only she got it ten, and all about Pap, and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says, Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in Hookaville, and we don't know who twas that killed Huck Finn. Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that'd like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself. No, is that so? Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how now he come to get and lynched. But the full night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger called Jim. Why, he---- I stopped. I reckon I better keep still. She run on and never noticed I had put in at all. The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a reward out for him, three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for old Finn, too, two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the murder and told about it, and was out with them on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. The full night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found out the nigger was gone. They found out he hadn't been seen since ten o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he ain't come back since, and he ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little. People thinks now that he killed his boy, and fixed things so folks would think Robert's done it, and then he'd get Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything on him, you know. Everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in Huck's money as easy as nothing. Yes, I reckon so, and I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it? No, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him. Why, are they after him yet? Well, you're innocent, ain't you. Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far from here. I'm one of them, but I ain't talked it around. A few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happen to say hardly anybody ever goes that island over yonder that they called Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there? Says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but I done some thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the head of the island a day or two before that. But I says to myself, lack is not that niggers hiding over there. Anyway, says I, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. I ain't seen any smoke since, so I reckon maybe he's gone if it was him. But husband's going over to see him and another man. He was gone up the river, but he got back to day, and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago. I had got so uneasy I couldn't sit still. I had to do something with my hands, so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threaten it. My hand shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped talking I looked up and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested, and it was, too, and says, Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get it. Is your husband going over there tonight? Oh, yes, he went uptown with the man I was telling you of to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They'll go over after midnight. Couldn't they see better if there was to wait till daytime? Yes, and couldn't the niggers see better, too? After midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip round through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dock if he's got one. I didn't think of that. The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit comfortable. Pretty soon she says, What did you say your name was, honey? Mary Williams. Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't look up. It seemed to me I said it was Sarah, so I felt sort of cornered, and was feared maybe I was looking at it, too. I wish the woman would say something more. The longer she said still the uneasier I was. But now she says, Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first came in. Oh, yes, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah's my first name. Some calls me Sarah. Some calls me Mary. Oh, that's the way of it. Yes, I'm. I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there anyway. I couldn't look up yet. Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place, and so forth, and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right about the rats. We'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. She showed me a bar led twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it gently. But she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and directly banged away at her but she missed him wide, and said, ouch, it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn't let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose I let drive, and if he'd have stayed where he was he'd have been tolerable sick rat. She said that was first rate, and she reckoned I would hive the next one. She went and got the lump a-led and fetched it back, and brought along a hanky yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I held up my two hands, and she put the hank over them, and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say, keep your eye on the rats. You'd better have the lead in your lap handy. So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my legs together on it, and she went on talking. But only about a minute. Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very pleasant, and says, come now. What's your real name? What, what, mom? What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob, or what is it? I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do. But I says, please don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mom. If I'm in the way here, I'll know you won't. Sit down and stay where you are. I ain't going to hurt you, and I ain't going to tell on you nothing. You just tell me your secret and trust me. I'll keep it, and what's more, I'll help you. So, my old man, if you want him to, you see, you're a runaway apprentice, that's all. It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it. You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, child, I wouldn't tell on you. Tell me all about it now, there's a good boy. So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would just make a clean breast and tell her everything. But you mustn't go back on a promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty miles back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer. He went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared it out, and I had been three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights, and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way, and I had a plenty. I said I believed my uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen. Goshen, child! This ain't Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen's ten miles further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen? Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand and five miles would fetch me to Goshen. He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong. Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. I got to be moving along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight. Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it. So she put me up a snack and says, Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer up prompt now. Don't stop to study over. Which hand gets up first? The hind end, mom. Well, then, a horse? The forward end, mom. Which side of a tree does the moss grow on? North side. If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats where their heads pointed the same direction? The whole fifteen, mom. Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. What's your real name now? George Peter's mom. Well, try to remember it, George. Don't forget and tell me it's Alexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George Alexander when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor. But you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it. Hold the needle still and poke the thread at it. That's the way a woman most always does. But a man always does it the other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hit yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff arm from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl. Not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap, she throws her knees apart. She don't clap them together the way you did when you catch the lump of lead. Why I spotted you for a boil when you were threading the needle, and I can try the other things just to make certain. Now trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams, George Alexander Peters, and if you get into trouble, you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I'll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road all the way, and next time you tramp, take shoes and socks with you. The river road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to Goshen I reckon. I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled all my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I jumped in and was off in a hurry. I went upstream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started to cross. I took off the sunbond it, for I didn't want no blinders on then. When I was about the middle, I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stopped and listened. The sound come faint over the water, but clear. Eleven. When I struck the head of the island, I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below, as hard as I could. I landed and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid sound asleep on the ground. I roused him out and said, Get up and hope yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. There after us! Jim never asked no questions. He never said a word. But the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time everything we had in the world was on all raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow-cove where she was hid. We put out the campfire at the cavern the first thing and didn't show a candle outside after that. I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece and took a look, but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word. CHAPTER XII It must have been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If the boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore, and it was well a boat didn't come, for we had never thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing line, or anything to eat. We was in rather too much of a sweat to think of so many things. He warn't good judgment to put everything on the raft. If the men went to the island I just expect they found the campfire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fall to mine. I played it as low down on them as I could. When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a tow-head and a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with a hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so it should look like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sand-bar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow teeth. We had mountains on the Missouri shore, and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and upbound steamboats fought the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman, and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself, she wouldn't sit down and watch a campfire. No, sir. She'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men were ready to start, and he believed they must have gone uptown to get a dog, and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a tow-head sixteen or seventeen miles below the village. No, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't. When it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cotton-wood thicket, and looked up and down and across. Nothing in sight. So Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wig-warm to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the wig-warm, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was at a reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wig-warm we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it into its place. This was to build a fire-on in sloppy weather or chilly. The wig-warm would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering-or, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. We fixed up a short fork-stick to hold the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming downstream to keep from getting run over, but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats unless we see we was in what they call a crossing, for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water, so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel but hunted easy water. This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four miles an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it weren't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all. Fifth night, nor the next, nor the next. Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights. Not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There won't a sound there. Everybody was asleep. Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat. Sometimes I lifted a chicken that weren't roost and comfortable, took him along. Pap always said, Take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself, you can easily find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see Pap when he didn't want the chicken his self, but that is what he used to say anyway. Mornings before daylight I slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon or a musch melon or a pumpkin or some new corn or things of that kind. Pap always said it won't no harm to borrow things if he was meaning to pay them back some time. But the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and Pap was partly right, so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more. Then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons or the cantaloupes or the musch melons or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory and concluded to drop crab apples and persimmons. We weren't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out too, because crab apples ain't ever good, and the persimmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. We shot a waterfowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all around. We lived pretty high. The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight with a power of thunder and lightning and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead and high rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by I says I, hello, Jim, looky yonder! It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell with an old slouch hack hanging on the back of it when the flashes come. Well it being away in the night and stormy and also mysterious like, I felt just the way any other boy would have felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little and see what there was there. So I says, let's land on her, Jim. But Jim was dead against it at first. He says, I don't want to go fool around no rack. We're doing blame well, and we better let blame well alone, as the good book says. Like it's not, there's a watchman on that wreck. Watchman, you're a grandmother, I says. There ain't nothing to watch but the Texas and the pilot house, and do you reckon anybody's going to risk his life for a Texas and a pilot house such a night as this when it's likely to break up and wash down the river any minute? Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. And besides, I says, we might borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom, cigars, I betcha, and cost five cents a piece solid cash. Steamboat captain's is always rich, and gets sixty dollars a month, and they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket? I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go buy this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure, that's what he'd call it, and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it? Wouldn't he spread his self, nor nothing? Why, you think it was Christopher Columbus discovering Kingdon Cumb. I wish Tom Sawyer was here. Jim, he grumbled a little but give in. He said we mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk might a lo. The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabbered derrick, and made fast there. The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to Lobbid, in the dark, towards the Texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Very soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumped on to it. And the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jiminy, away down through the Texas hall, we see a light. And all in the same second we seemed to hear low voices in Yonder. Jim whispered, and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft. But just then I heard a voice wail out and say, Oh, please don't, boys. I swear I won't ever tell. Another voice said pretty loud, That's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way before. You always want more on your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you swore if you didn't, you'd tell. But this time you said it just one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country. By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a bylin' with curiosity, and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so I won't either. I'm going to see what's going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dock till there warn't but one state room betwixt me in the cross-hall of the Texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standed over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying, I'd like to, in a order to, a mean skunk. The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, Oh, please don't, Bill. I ain't ever going to tell. Every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say, Did you ain't? You never said no truer thing than that. You bet you. And once he said, Hear him beg, and yet if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him, he'd have killed us both. And what for? Just for nothing. Just because we stood on our riots. That's what for. But I lay you ain't going to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill. Bill says, I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm a-for-killing him. And didn't he kill old Hatfield just the same way? And don't he deserve it? But I don't want him killed, and I got my reasons for it. Bless your heart, for them words, Jake Packard. I never forget you long as I live. Says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail, and started towards where I was, there in the dark, and motion-bill to come. I crawled fished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat slanted so I couldn't make very good time. So to keep from getting run over and catched, I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The man came up hauling along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom he says, Here, come in here. And any come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there with their hands on the ledge of the berth and talked. I couldn't see them, but I could tell where there was by the whiskey they'd been having. I was glad I didn't drink whiskey. But it wouldn't have made much difference, anyway, because most of the time they couldn't have treated me because I didn't breathe. I was too scared. And besides, a body couldn't breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says, He said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've served him. Sure's you're born, he'll turn state's evidence. Now you hear me. I'm for putting him out of his troubles. So am I, says Packard, very quiet. Blame it I'd sort of begun to think you wasn't. Well then, that's all right. Let's go and do it. Hold on a minute. I ain't had my say yet. You listen to me. Shootin's good. But there's quieter ways of the things got to be done. But what I say is this. It ain't good sense to go courtin' round after a halter if you can get at what you're up to in some way that's just as good and at the same time don't bring you into no risks. Ain't that so? You bet it is. But how you gonna manage it this time? Well, my idea is this. We'll rustle round, gather up whatever pickins we've overlooked in the state rooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we'll wait. Now I say it ain't gonna be more than two hours before this wreck breaks up and washes off down the river. See, he'll be drowned it. It won't have nobody to blame for but his sown self. I reckon that's a considerable sight better than killin' of him. I'm unfavorable to killin' the man as long as you can get round it. It ain't good sense. It ain't good morals. Ain't I right? Yes, I reckon you are. But suppose you don't break up and wash off. Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we? All right, then. Come along. So they started, and I lit out all in a cold sweat and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there, but I sat in a kinda coarse whisper, and he answered up right at my elbow with a sort of a moan. And I says, Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for foolin' round a moanin'. There's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her driftin' down the river so these fellas can't get away from the wreck, there's one of them gonna be in a bad fix. And if we find their boat, we can put all of them in a bad fix for the sheriff will get them. Quick, hurry. I'll hunt the labyrinth side. You hunt the stabbered. You start at the raft and, Oh, my lordy, lordy, raft. There ain't no raft no more. She done broke loose and gone. Oh, and here we is. 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 13. Well, I catch my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that. But it warn't no time to be sentimentoring. We've got to find that boat now. Had to have it for ourselves. So we went a quakin' and shakin' down the stabbered side, and slow work it was too. Seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't believe he could go any further. So scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the Texas and found it. And then scrapped along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door, there was the skiff, sure enough. I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would've been aboard of her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone. But he jerked it in again and says, Heave that blame lantern out of sight, Bill. He flung a bag of something into the boat and then got in himself and sat down. It was Packard. Then Bill, he come out and got in. Packard says in a low voice, already, shove off. I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says, hold on, you go through them? No, didn't you? No, he's got a share of the cash yet. Well then, come along. No use to take truck and leave money. Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to? Maybe he won't, but we got to have it anyway. Come along. So they got out and went in. The door slammed too because it was on the careen's side and in a half-second I was in the boat and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope and away we went. We didn't touch nor and we didn't speak nor whisper nor hardly even breathe. We went glide and swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-box and past the stern. Then in a second or two more, we was a hundred yards below the wreck and the darkness soaked her up every last sign of her and we was safe and noted. When we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern show like a little spark of the Texas door for a second and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. Then Jim manned the oars and we took out after the raft. Now was the first time that I began to worry about the men. I reckoned I hadn't had time to before. I began to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no tellin' but I might come to be a murderer myself yet and then how would I like it? So desire to Jim. First light we see will land a hundred yards below it or above it in a place where it'll be a good hide in place for you and the skiff and then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape so they can be hung when their time comes. But that idea was a failure for pretty soon it begun to storm again and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down and never a light showed. Everybody in bed I reckon. We boomed along down the river watchin' for lights and watchin' for our raft. After a long time the rain let up but the clouds stayed and the lightning kept whimpering and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead floating and we made for it. It was the raft and mighty clad was we to get aboard of it again. We seen the light now way down to the right on shore so I said I would go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile and I told Jim to float along down and show a light when we judged he had gone about two mile and keep it burning till I come. Then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more showed up on the hillside it was a village. I closed in above the shore light and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double hole fairy boat. I skimmed around for the watchman. I wonderin' whereabouts he slept and by and by I found him roostin' on the bits forward with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves and begun to cry. He stood up in a kinda startlish way but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch and then he says, hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub, what's the trouble? I says, pap and mam insist and then I broke down. He says, oh dang it all, don't take on so we all has to have our troubles and this'll come out all right. What's the matter with him? There, there, are you the watchman of the boat? Yes, he says, kinda pretty well satisfied like. I'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck cam. Sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim Hormbeck and I can't be so blame generous and good to Tom, Dick and Harry as what he is and slam around money the way he does but I've told him many a time I wouldn't trade places with him. Force as I, a sailor's life's a life for me and I'm durin' if I'd live two mile out of town where there ain't nothin' ever goin' on not for all his spondulics and is much more on top of it. Says I, I broke in and says, there in an awful peck of trouble and who is? Why, pap and mam insist and Miss Hooker and if you'd take your ferry boat and go up there. Up where? Where are they? On the rack. What rack? Why, the ain't but one. What? You don't mean the Walter Scott? Yes. Good land, what are they doin' there for gracious sex? Well, they didn't go there a purpose. I bet they didn't, why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for them if they don't get off mighty quick. Why, how in the nation did they ever get into such a scrape? Easy enough, Miss Hooker was a visitin' up there to the town. Yes, booths landin', go on. She was a visitin' there at booths landin' and just in the edge of the evening she started over with a nigger woman and the horse ferry to stay all night at her friend's house. Miss, what you may call her, I'd disremember her name. And they lost their stearin' oar and swung around and went a floatin' down stern first, about two mile and saddlebags'd on the wreck. And the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses were all lost. But Miss Hooker, she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark, we'd come along down in our trading-skow and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it. And so we saddlebags'd and all of us was saved but Bill Whipple, and oh, he was the best creature. I most wished it'd been me, I'd do. My George, it's the beatin'est thing I ever struck. And then what did you all do? Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we could make nobody here. So perhaps it's somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it. And Miss Hooker, she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below and been foolin' along ever since, tryin' to get people to do somethin', but they said, what, in such night and such current? There ain't no sense in it, go for the steam ferry. Now if you'll go and buy Jackson I'd like to and blame it, I don't know but I will, but who in the Dignations are gonna pay for it? Do you reckon you'll pap? Why, that's all right, Miss Hooker, she told me particular that her uncle hornback. Great guns, is he her uncle? Lookie here, you break for that light over Yonderway and turn out west when you get there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern. Tell him to dart you out to Jim Hornback's and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool around any because he'll want to know the news. Tell him I'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself now, I'm a goin' up around the corner here to roust out my engineer. I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards and tucked myself in among some woodboats for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start. But take it all around I was feeling rather comfortable on accounts of takin' all this trouble for that gang for not many would've done it. I wished the widow know'd about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helpin' these rap scallions because rap scallions and deadbeats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, slidein' along down. Kinda cold shiver went through me and then I struck out for her. She was very deep and I seen in a minute there warn't much chance for anybody bein' alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little but there wasn't any answer, all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckon if they could stand it, I could. Then here comes the ferryboat, so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long downstream slant. And when I judged I was outta eye reach, I laid on my oars and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders because captain would know her uncle Hornback would want them, and then pretty soon the ferryboat gave it up and went for the shore and I laid into my work and went a boomin' down the river. It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east so we struck for an island and hid the raft and sunk the skiff and turned in and slept like dead people. 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 14. By and by when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck and found boots and blankets and clothes and all sorts of other things and a lot of books and a spyglass and three boxes of seagars. We hadn't ever been this rich before and neither of our lives. The seagars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods talkin' and me readin' the books and havin' a general good time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferry boat and I said these kinds of things was adventures. Well he said he didn't want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the Texas and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died. Because he judged it was all up with him any way it could be fixed. For if he didn't get saved he would get drowned it and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward and then Miss Watson would sell him south, sure. Well, he was right. He was most always right. He had an uncommon level head for a nigger. I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such and how gaudy they dressed and how much style they put on and called each other your majesty and your grace and your lordship and so on, instead of mister. And Jim's eyes bugged out and he was interested. He says, I didn't know they was so many of them. I ain't heard about none of them scarcely but old King Solomon, unless you count stem kings what's in a pack of cards. How much do a king get? Yet, I says, why they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it. They can have just as much as they want. Everything belongs to them. Ain't that gay? And what they got to do, Huck? They don't do nothing. Why, how you talk? They just sit around. No, is that so? Of course it is. They just sit around, except maybe when there's a war then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around or go hawking, just hawking and, ah, shh, did you hear a noise? We skipped out and looked, but it want nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel way down coming round the point, so we come back. Yes, says I, and other times when things is dull they fuss with the parliament and if everybody don't go just so, they wax their heads off, but mostly they hang around the harem. Round a witch, harem. What's the harem? The place where the keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? Solomon had one, he had about a million wives. Why, yes, that's so. Ah, I done forgot it. The harem's a bolden house, I reckon. Most likely they has rackety times in the nursery. And I reckon the wives quarrels considerable and that crease the racket. Yet they say Solomon the wisest man did ever live. I don't take no stock in that. Because why would a wise man want to live in the midst of such a blim-blaman all the time? No, indeed he wouldn't. A wise man had taken Bill a boil-a-factory and then he could shut down the boil-a-factory when he want to rest. Well, he was the wisest man anyway because the widow, she told me so, her own cell. I don't care what the widow say. He warn't no wise man another. He had some of the dead fetchin'est ways I ever see. Does you know about that child that he was going to chop in two? Yes, the widow told me all about it. Well, then, warn't that thou beatin'est notion in the world? You just take and look at it for a minute. There's the stump, there. That's wanted the woman. Here's you, that's the other one. I, Solomon, and this year Dollar Bill's the child. Both of you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin' around amongst the neighbors and find out which and you to Bill do belong to? And do hand it over to the right one, all safe and sound, the way that anybody that had any gumption would? No, I take and whack the Bill in two and give half of it to you and the other half to the other woman. That's the way Solomon was going to do with a child. Now I want to ask you, what's the use of that half of Bill? Can't buy nothin' with it. And what use is half a child? I wouldn't give a darn for a million of them. But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point. Blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile. Who, me? Go long. Don't talk to me about your points. I reckon I know sense when I seize it and there ain't no sense in such doings as that. The dispute warn't about half a child. The dispute was about a whole child and demand to think he can settle a dispute about a whole child with a half a child don't know enough to come in out of the ring. Don't talk to me about Solomon Hook, I knows him by the back. But I tell you, you don't get the point. Blame the point. I reckon I knows what I know. And mind you, the real point is down further. It's down deeper. It lays in the way Solomon was raised. You take a man that's got only one or two chilling. Is that man going to be wasteful at chilling? No, he ain't. He can't fold it. He knows how to value them. But you take a man that's got about five million chilling running round a house and it's different. He is soon chop a child in two as a cat. And there's plenty more. A child of two more or less want no consequence to a Solomon that fetch him. I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there won't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that he got his head cut off in France long time ago and about his little boy, the dolphin, that would have been a king. But they took and shut him up in jail and some say he died there. Poor little chap. But some says he got out and got away and come to America. That's good. But he'll be putty lonesome. There ain't no kings here, is they, Huck? No. Did he can't get no situation? What's he going to do? Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police and some of them learns people how to talk French. Why, Huck, don't the French people talk the same way we does? No, Jim. You couldn't understand a word that has said, not a single word. Well, now, I bet you're busted. How do that come? I don't know, but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. Suppose, ma'am, was to come to you and say, Polly-vous, Francie? What would you think? I wouldn't think nothing. I'd take and bust him over the head. That is, if he weren't white, I wouldn't allow no nigger to call me that. Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know how to talk French? Well, then, why couldn't he say it? Why, he IS a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it. Well, it's a blame-ridiculous way, and I don't want to hear no more about it. There ain't no sense in it. Look ahead, Jim, does a cat talk like we do? No, a cat don't. Well, does a cow? No, a cow don't nother. Does a cat talk like a cow? Or a cow talk like a cat? No, they don't. It's natural and right for them to talk different from each other, ain't it? Coss. It ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us? Why, most surely it is. Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that. Is a cat a man-huck? No? Well, then, there ain't no sense in a cat talking like a man. Is a cow a man? Or is a cow a cat? No, she ain't either of them. Well, then, she ain't got no business to talk like either one of the other of them. Is a Frenchman a man? Yes. Well, then, dad blame it. Why don't he talk like a man? You answer me, dad. I see it weren't no use wasting words. He can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit. And a 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 15. We judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sail the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states and then be out of trouble. Well, the second night a fog began to come on, and we made for a tow-head to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog. But when I paddled ahead in the canoe with the line to make fast, there weren't anything but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft came booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots in a way she went. I see the fog closing down. It made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most half a minute, it seemed to me. And then there weren't no raft in sight. You couldn't see 20 yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke, but she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my hand shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them. As soon as I got started, I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the tow-head. That was all right as far as it went, but the tow-head warn't 60 yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it, I shot out into the solid white fog and hadn't no more idea which way I was going than a dead man. Thanks, I, it won't do to paddle. First I know I'll run into the bank or a tow-head or something. I got to sit still and float, and yet it's my a-figity business to have to hold your hand still at such a time. I whooped and listened. The way down there somewhere as I hear a small whoop, up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. And the next time I was heading away to the left of it and not gaining on it much neither, for I was flying round this way and that and the other, but it was going straight ahead all the time. I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time, but he never did and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along and directly here's the whoop behind me, I was tangled good now, that was somebody else's whoop or else I was turned around. I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again, it was behind me yet, but in a different place. It kept coming, it kept changing its place and I kept answering till by and by it was in front of me again and I knowed the current had swung the canoes head downstream and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. The whooping went on and in about a minute I come a booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared the current was tearing by them so swift. In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I sat perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump and I reckon I didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was that cut bank was an island and Jim had gone down the other side of it. You want no tail head that you could float by in 10 minutes. It had the big temper of a regular island. It might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide. I kept quiet with my ears cocked about 15 minutes I reckon. I was floating along a course four or five miles an hour but you don't ever think of that. No, you feel like you're laying dead still on the water and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to yourself how fast you're going but you catch your breath and think my, how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night you try it once, you'll see. Next for about half an hour I whoops now and then. At last I hear the answer a long ways off and tries to follow it but I couldn't do it and directly I judged I got into a nest of toe heads for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me sometimes just a narrow channel between and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I won't long loosen the whoops down amongst the toe heads and only try to chase them a little while anyway because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. You never know to sound judge around so and swap places so quick so much. I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river and so I judged the raft must be butted into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing. It was floating a little faster than what I was. Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by but I couldn't hear no sign of a whoop no where's. I reckon Jim had fetched up on a snag maybe and it was all up with him. I was good and tired so I laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to go to sleep of course but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it so I thought I would just take one little catnap. But I reckon it was more than a catnap for when I waked up the stars were shining bright the fog was all gone and I was spinning down a big bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was. I thought I was dreaming and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up and dim out at last week. It was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars. I looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water. I took after it but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of saw logs made fast together. Then I see another speck and chase that and then another and this time I was right. It was the raft. When I got to it Jim was sitting there with his head down between his knees asleep with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. The other oar was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt so she'd had a rough time. I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft and began to gap and stretch my fist out against Jim and says, hello Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up? Goodness gracious, is that you, Huck? And you ain't dead. You ain't drowned it? You's back again? It's too good for true, honey. It's too good for true. Let me look at you, child. Let me feel you. No, you ain't dead. You's back again, live and sound, just the same old Huck. The same old Huck, thanks to goodness. What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking? Drinking? Has I been a-drinking? Has I had a chance to be a-drinking? Well then, what makes you talk so wild? How does I talk wild? How? Why, ain't you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if I'd gone away? Huck? Huck, Finn, you look me in the eye. Look me in the eye. Ain't you been gone away? Gone away? Why? What in the nation do you mean? I ain't been gone anywheres. Where would I go to? Well, looky here, boss. There's something wrong, there is. Is I me, or who is I? Is I here, or where is I? Now, that's what I wants to know. Well, I think you're here plain enough, but I think you're a tangle-headed old fool, Jim. I is, is I. Well, you answer me this. Didn't you towed out the line and the canoe for to make faster the tow-head? No, I didn't. What tow-head? I ain't seen no tow-head. You ain't seen no tow-head? Looky here. Didn't you line, pull, loosen, did the raft go a-hummin' down the river and leave you and the canoe behind in the fog? What fog? Why, the fog, the fog that's been around all night. And didn't you whoop, and didn't I whoop, till we got mixed up into islands and one of us got lost and the other one was just as good as lost cause he didn't know where he was. And didn't I bust up again a lot of dim islands and have a terrible time and most get drowneded? Now, ain't that so, boss? Ain't it so? You answer me, Dad. Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I ain't seen no fog, no no islands, no no troubles, no nothing. I've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about 10 minutes ago. And I reckon I done the same. You couldn't have got drunk in that time, so, of course, you've been dreaming. Dad, fetch it, how's I gonna dream all that in 10 minutes? Well, hang it all, you did dream it, cause there didn't any of it happen. But, Huck, it's all just as plain to me as, it don't make no difference how plain it is. There ain't nothing in it. I know, because I've been here all the time. Jim did say nothing for about five minutes but sat there studying over it. Then he says, Well then, I reckon I did dream it, Huck. But dog my cats if it ain't the powerfulest dream I ever see. And I ain't ever had no dream before that's tired me like this one. Oh, well, that's all right. Because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes. But this one was a staving dream. Tell me all about it, Jim. So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through. Just as it happened. Only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start in and interpret it cause it was sent for a warning. He said the first toehead stood for a man that would try to do us some good but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck instead of keeping us out of it. The lot of toeheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river which was the free states and wouldn't have no more trouble. It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft but it was clearing up again now. Oh well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim, I says. But what does these things stand for? It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed door. You could see them first right now. Jim looked at the trash and then looked at me and back at the trash again. He got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the things straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says, what do they stand for? I was going to tell you. When I got all wore out with work and went to call him for you and went to sleep my heart was most broke because you was lost and I didn't care no more what become of me and the raft. When I wake up and find you back again all safe and sound the tears come and I could have got down on my knees and kiss your foot, I was so thankful. And all you was thinking about was how you could make a full old gym with a lie. That truck there is trash and trash is what people is that puts dirt on the head of their friends and makes them ashamed. Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kiss his foot to get him to take it back. It was 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go and hobble myself to a nigger but I'd done it and I won't ever sorry for it afterwards neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks and I wouldn't have done that one if I had noted it would make him feel that 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 16. We slept most all day and started out at night. A little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long gone by as that procession. She had four long sweeps at each end so we judged she carried as many as 30 men likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open campfire in the middle, and a tall flagpole at either end. There was a power or style about her. It amounted to something being a raftsman on such a craft as that. We went drifting down into a big bend and the night clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide and was walled with solid timber on both sides. You couldn't see a break in it hardly ever or a light. We talked about Cairo and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I said likely we wouldn't because I had heard there weren't but about a dozen houses there and if they didn't happen to have them lit up how was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big rivers joined together there that would show. But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim and me too. So the question was what to do? I said paddle ashore the first time a light showed and tell them Pap was behind coming along with a trading scow and was a green hand at the business and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was a good idea so it took a smoke on it and waited. There weren't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town and not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it because he'd be a free man the minute he see it but if he missed it he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every little while he jumps up and says, there she is. But it weren't. It was jack-o'-lanterns or lightning bugs. So he sat down again and went to watch and same as before. Jim said it made him all over Tremblay and Feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over Tremblay and Feverish too to hear him because I'd begun to get through my head that he was most free and who was to blame for it? Why me? I couldn't get that out of my conscience. No howl nor no way. He got to trouble me so I couldn't rest. I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did and it stayed with me and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I want to blame because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner. But it warn't no use. Conscious up and says every time. But you knowed he was running for his freedom and you could have paddled ashore and told somebody. That was so. I couldn't get around that no way. That was where it pinched. Conscious says to me, what had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigga go off right under your eyes and never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book. She tried to learn you your manners. And she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That's what she done. I got to feeling so mean and so miserable. I most wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the graft. Abusing myself to myself. And Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. When neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and said, does Cairo? It went through me like a shot. And I thought if it was Cairo, I reckon I would die of miserableness. Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state, he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent. And when he got enough, he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived. And then they would both work to buy the two children. And if the master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an abolitionist to go and steal them. It most froze me to hear such talk. He would never dare to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, give a nigger an inch and he'll take an L. Thanks, I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flatfooted and saying he would steal his children, children that belonged to a man I didn't even know, a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that. It was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stir me up hotter than ever until at last I says to it, lit up on me. It ain't too late yet. I'll paddle a show at the first light and tell. I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out shop for a light and saw a singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings out, We're safe, Huck, we're safe. Jump up and crack your heels. That's the good old Cairo at last. I just knows it. I says, I take the canoe and go and see Jim. It might be, you know. He jumped and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on and gave me the paddle. And as I shoved off, he says, put as soon I'll be a shouting for joy and I'll say it's all an account of Huck. I was a free man and I couldn't ever been free if it hadn't been for Huck. Huck done it. Jim won't ever forget you, Huck. Used the best friend Jim's ever had and used the only friend old Jim's got now. I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him. But when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then and I weren't right down certain whether I was glad I started, whether I weren't. When I was 50 yards off, Jim says, there you goes, the old true Huck, the only white gentleman that ever kept his promise to old Jim. Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I got to do it. I can't get out of it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says, what's that yonder? Piece of a raft, I says. Do you belong on it? Yes, sir. Any men on it? Only one, sir. Well, there's five niggers run off tonight up yonder. Above the head of the bend is your man white or black. I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the woods wouldn't come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it. But I warn't man enough. Hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening, so I just give up trying and up and says, he's white. I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves. I wish you would, says I. Because it's pap that's there and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick and so is mam and Marianne. Oh, the devil, we're in a hurry, boy. But I suppose we've got to. Come buckle to your paddle and let's get along. I buckle to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a stroke or two, I says. Pap will be mighty much obliged to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore and I can't do it by myself. Well, that's infernal mean, odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter with your father? It's the, well, it ain't anything much. They stop pulling. It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft now. One says, boy, that's a lie. What is the matter with your pap? Answer up square now and it'll be the better for you. I will, sir, I will, honest, but don't leave me, please. It's the gentleman, if you only pull ahead and let me heave you the headline, you won't have to come near the raft. Please do. Set her back, John, set her back, says one. They back water. Keep away, boy, keep the lured. Confounded, I just expect the wind has bloated to us. Your pap's got the smallpox and you know it precious well. Why didn't you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all over? Well, says I, a blubbering. I've told everybody before and they just went away and left us. Poor devil, there's something in that. We are right down sorry for you, but we, well, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. Looky here, I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself or you'll smash everything to pieces. You float along down about 20 miles when you come to a town on the left hand bank of the river. It will be long after sun up then and when you ask for help you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever. Don't be a fool again and let people guess what is the matter. Now we're trying to do you a kindness, so you just put 20 miles between us, that's a good boy. You wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is, it's only a wood-yard. Say, I reckon your father's poor and I'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. Here, I'll put a $20 gold piece on this board and you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom, it won't do to fool with smallpox, don't you see? Hold on Parker, says the other man. Here's a 20 to put on the board for me. Goodbye, boy. You do as Mr. Parker told you and you'll be all right. That's so, my boy. Goodbye, goodbye. If you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them and you can make some money by it. Goodbye, sir, says I. I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it. They went off and I got aboard the raft feeling bad and low because I knowed very well I had done wrong and I see it warn't no use for me to try to learn to do right. A body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show. When the pinch comes there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute and says to myself, hold on. Suppose you'd done right and give Jim up. Would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I. I'd feel bad. I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well then, says I, what's the use you learnin' to do right when it's troublesome to do right when ain't no trouble to do wrong and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. I went into the wigwam. Jim warn't there. I looked all around. He warn't anywhere, I says. Jim! Here I is, Huck. Is the out of sight yet? Don't talk loud. He was in the river under the stern ore with just his nose out. I told him they was out of sight, so he come aboard. He says, I was a-listening to all the talk and I slipped into the river and was going to shove for sure if they come aboard. Then I was going to swim to the raft again when they was gone. But Lawsey, how you did fool him, Huck? That was the smartest dodge. I'd tell you, child, I expected save old Jim. Old Jim ain't gonna forget you for a dat, honey. Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise, $20 apiece. Jim said he could take the deck passage on a steamboat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. He said 20 mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mine in particular about hiding the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles and getting all ready to quit rafting. That night about ten, we hove inside of the lights of a town a way down in a left-hand bend. I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out in the river with a skiff set in a trot line. I ranged up and says, Mr., is that town Cairo? Cairo, no, you must be a blameful. What town is it, Mr.? If you want to know, go and find out. You stay here bothering around me for half a minute longer, you'll get something you won't want. I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said, never mind. Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned. We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again, but it was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground round Cairo, Jim said. I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a tow-head, tolerable close to the left-hand bank. I'd begun to suspicion something, so did Jim. I says, maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night. He says, don't let's talk about it, Huck. Polenegas can't have no luck. I all inspected that rattlesnake skin weren't done with its work. I wish I never seen that snakeskin, Jim. I do wish I never laid eyes on it. It ain't your fault, Huck. You didn't know. Don't you blame yourself about it. When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water in shore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy, so was all up with Cairo. We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore. We couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. There warn't no way but to wait for dark and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work. And when we went back to the raft about dark, the canoe was gone. We didn't say a word for a good while. There warn't anything to say. We both knowed well enough that it was some more work of the rattlesnake skin, so what was used to talk about it? It would only look like we was fine in fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't anybody around the way PAP would do, for that might set people after us. So we shoved out after dark on the raft. Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle over snakeskin after all that snakeskin done for us will believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore, but we didn't see no rafts laying up, so we went along during three hours and more. Well, the night got gray and rather thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. You got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern and judged she would see it. Upstream boats don't generally come close to us. They go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs, but nights like this they bull ride up the channel against the whole river. We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching. Sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs and thinks he's mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us, but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glowworms around it. But all of a sudden she bulged out big and scary with a long row of wide open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right above us. There was a yell at us and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a pow-wow of cussing and whistling of steam, and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she comes smashing straight through the raft. I dived and I aimed to find the bottom too for a 30-foot wheel had got to go over me and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could always stay under water a minute. This time I reckon I stayed under a minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry for I was nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of my nose and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current and of course that boat started her engines again 10 seconds after she stopped them. Boy, they never cared much for raftsmen. For now she was churning along up the river out of sight in the thick weather, though I could hear her. I sung out for Jim about a dozen times but I didn't get any answer. So I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was dreading water and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore which meant that I was in a crossing. So I changed off and went that way. It was one of these long, slanting two-mile crossings so I was a good long time in getting over. I made a safe landing and clump up the bank. I couldn't see it but a little ways but I went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more and then I run across a big, old-fashioned double log-house before I noticed it. I was going to rush by and get away but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to hell and embarking at me and I knew better than to move another peg. End of chapter.