 10. After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he came 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 weren't buried was more likely to go hauntin' 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 knowed who shot the man and what they'd done it for. We rummaged the clothes we'd 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 a-node 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 raked in all this truck and 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 too pert. 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 of 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 varment curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a second with a stick and Jim grabbed Papp's whiskey 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 done it and he ate 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 away amongst the bushes for I weren'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 sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big and so did his leg. But by and by the drunk began to come and so I judged he was all right but I'd rather been bit with a snake than Papp's whiskey. Jim was laid out 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 see what had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time and he said that handling a 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've 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 edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him so so they say but I didn't see it Papp 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 done was to bait 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. We found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball and lots of rubbish. We split the ball open with the hatchet and there was a spool in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time to coat it 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 pedal out such a fish as that by the pound in the market house there. Everybody buys some of him. 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 stirring 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 them 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 in the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry 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 in and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about 40 year old in there knitting by a 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 10. Chapter 11 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dion Jones, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 11. Come in says the woman and I did. She says take a cheer. I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes and says, What might your name be? Sarah Williams. Whereabouts do you live in this neighborhood? Noam 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. Noam, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at a farm. So I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late. My mother's down sick and out of money and everything. And I come to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town. She says I ain't ever been there before. Do you know him? No, but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two weeks. It's a 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 a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't a fear of 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 was, and how they didn't know that 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 Hookerville, but 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 nigh he come to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim. Why he? I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She ran 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 him on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left, before 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 they ain't lookin' for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy, and fixed things so folks would think robbers 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, ma'am. I don't see nothin' in the way of it. Has everybody quit thinkin' the nigger done it? Oh, 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, your 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 to that island over Yonder that they call 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, so I says to myself, like as 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. My husband's going over to see him and another man. He was gone up the river, but he got back today, 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 the table and went to threading 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 led on to be interested, and I 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 up town 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 they was to wait till daytime? Yes, and couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dark, 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 had said it was Mary before, so I didn't look up. Seemed to me I said it was Sarah, so I felt sort of cornered, and was afeard maybe I was looking it, too. I wished 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 was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there anyway. I couldn't look up yet. Well, the woman felt talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was 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. You'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 of lead, twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generally, 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 a rat. 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 as stayed where he was, he'd have been a tolerable sick rat. She said that was first rate, and she reckoned I would have the next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn, which she wanted me to help her with. I held up my two hands, and she put the hank over them, and she went on talking about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say, keep your eye on the rats, you 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, 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, to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mom. If I'm in the way here, I'll, no 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 another. 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 prentice, 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. That'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 she mustn't go back on her 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 mile 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 out, and I had been three nights coming the thirty miles. I travelled 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, 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 mile 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 mile 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 it. Which end gets up first? The hind end, mum. Well, then a horse. The forward end, mum. 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 with their heads pointed the same direction? The whole fifteen, mum. 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 Peters, mum. 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 the other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch 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-armed 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 catched the lump of lead, why I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle, and I contrived 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 on 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 across. I took off the sun-bonnet, 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, and 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 go. 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 says, Get up, and hump 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 our 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. Please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Dion Jines, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Chapter 12. It must have been a close on to one o'clock, when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a 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 hadn't ever 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. It weren'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 weren't no fault of 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 in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them, so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it, as thick as heroin 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 weren't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steam-boats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steam-boats fight 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 was 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 mile 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 cottonwood 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 wigwam to get under, in blazing weather, and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep, with a frame around it for to hold it to its place. This was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly. The wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering or two, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang 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 underwater, so upbound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. The second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile 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. That night, nor the next, nor the next. Every night we pass 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 pass 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 wasn't a sound there, and 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, and sometimes I lifted a chicken that weren't roosting comfortable and 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 Pop when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say anyway. Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a musch melon, or a pumpkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meanin' to pay them back sometime. 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 satisfactory, and concluded to drop crab-apples and persimmons. We weren't feelin' 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 right 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 round, 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 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, and 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 hat 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 foolin' long, or no wreck. We's doin' blame well, and we better let blame well alone, as de Goodbook says. Like us not, there's a watchman on that wreck. Watchman, your 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 off 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 havin' out of the captain's stateroom. Seagars, I bet you, and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich, and gets sixty dollars a month, and they don't care ascent 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 himself nor nothin'? Why, you'd think it was Christopher Columbus discovering Kingdom come. 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 mighty low. The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the starboard, Derrick, and made fast there. The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it, too lobbered, in the dark, towards the Texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys. It was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clump onto 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 seized 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 way loud and say, oh, please don't, boys, I swear I won't ever tell. Another voice said pretty loud, it's a lie, Jim Turner, you've acted this way before, you always want more in your share of the truck, and you've always got it too, because you swore it if you didn't, you'd tell, but this time you've 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 villain with curiosity, and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so I won't either. I'm a-going to see what's going on in here. So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark, till there weren't but one state room betwixt me, and 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 standing 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, and I ought to, to the mean skunk. The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, oh, please don't, Bill. I ain't ever going to tell. And every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say, deed you ain't. You never said no truer thing in 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 rights. That's what's for. But I lay you ain't a-going to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill. Bill says, I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm 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've got my reasons for it. Bless your heart for them words, Jake Packard. I'll never forget you longs 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 motioned Bill to come. I crawfished as fast as I could, about two yards, but the boat slanted so that I couldn't make very good time. So to keep from getting run over, and catched, I crawled into a state room on the upper side. The man came up pying along in the dark, and when Packard got to my state room, he says, here, come in here, and in he 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 they was by the whisky they'd been having. I was glad I didn't drink whisky, but it wouldn't made much difference, anyway, because most of the time they couldn't atread 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 hate had my say yet. You listen to me, shootin's good, but there's quieter ways if the things got to be done. But what I say is this, it ain't good sense to go a quart in around 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's you going to manage it this time? Well, my idea is this, we'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickens 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 a going to be more than two hours before this wreck breaks up and washes off down the river. See, he'll be drowned it, and won't have nobody to blame for it, but his own self. I reckon that's a considerable sight better, and killin' of him. I'm unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can get around it. It ain't good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right? Yes, I reckon you are, but suppose she 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 said in a kind of a coarse whisper, Jim—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' around and moaning. There's a gang of murderers in Yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat, and set her drifting down the river, so these folks can't get away from the wreck, there's one of them going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat, we can put all of them in a bad fix, for the sheriff'll get them. Quick, hurry, I'll hunt the labored side, you hunt the starboard. You start at the raft, and—oh, my lordy, lordy, raft! They ain't no raft, no more. She done broke loose, and gone. I, and here, we is. The Adventures of Huckleberry Fenn 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 weren't no time to be sentimentaring. We'd got to find that boat now, had to have it for ourselves, so we went a quakin' and shakin' down the starboard side, and slow work it was, 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 fixed shore, so on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the Texas, and found it, and then scrambled 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-haul door, there was the skiff, sure enough, I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful, and another second I would have been a board of her, but just in, 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, he'd that blame lantern out of sight, Bill. He flung a bag of something into the boat, then he 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, did you go through him? No, didn't you? No, so he's got his 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. Well, 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 side, and in half a second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope in a way we went. We didn't touch an oar, 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 at 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 our raft. Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men. I reckon I hadn't had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling, but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So I says to Jim, the first light we see will lend a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding place for you and the skiff, and then I'll go fix up some kind of 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, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time, the rain led 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 glad was we to get aborted 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 onto the raft in a pile, and I told Jim to float along down and show a light when he judged he had gone about two miles, 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 a 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 jack's daff of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed around for the watchman, a wondering whereabouts he slept, and by and by I found him roosting 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 stirred up in kind of a 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, Pappin' Mam and Sis, and then I broke down. He says, Oh, dang it now, don't take on so. We all has to have our troubles, and this'll come out all right. What's the matter with them? There, there, are you the watchman of the boat? Yes, he says, kind of pretty well satisfied like, I'm the captain, and the owner, and the mate, and the pilot, and the watchman, and the deck and sometimes I'm the freight and the passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be sublime, 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, and I wouldn't trade places with him for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm darned if I'd live two miles out of town where there ain't nothing ever going on, not for all his spondulics and as much more on top of it, says I, I broke in and says, they're an awful peck of trouble, and who is, why, Papp and Mam and Sis and Miss Hooker, and if you'd take your ferry boat and go up there, up where, where are they, on the wreck, what wreck, why, there ain't but one, why, don't you mean the Walter Scott, yes, good land, what are they doing there for gracious sakes, well, they didn't go there a purpose, I bet they didn't, why, greet 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 visiting up there to the town, yes, Booth's Landing, go on, she was visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman and the horse ferry to stay out all night at her friend's house, Miss, whatcha may call her, I just remember her name, and they lost their steering oar and swung around and went a floating down stern first about two miles, saddlebags on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker, she made a grab and got aboard the wreck, well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our trading scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it, so we saddlebags'd, but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple, and oh, he was the best creature, I most wish it had been me, I do, my George, that'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 couldn't make nobody hear, so Papp and 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 fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, wad, in such a night, in such a current, ain't no sense, and it'd 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 Dignation's going to pay for it? Do you reckon you're Papp? 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 yonder, and turn west when you get there, about a quarter of a mile, 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 fool around any because he'll want to know the news, tell him I'll have his knees all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself now, I'm going around this corner here to rest out my engineer. I struck out for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner, I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in amongst some wood boats, for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferry boat start, but take it all around I was feeling rather comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would have done it, I wished a widow note about it, I judged she would be proud of me for helping these Rapscallians, because Rapscallians and deadbeats is to kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. Well, before long here comes the wreck, dam and duskies sliding along down, a kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her, she was very deep, and I see in a minute there weren't much chance for anybody being alive in her, I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer, all dead still, I felt a bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckon if they could stand it I could, then here comes the ferry boat, so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long downstream slant, and when I judged I was out of eye reach, I laid on my oars and looked back to see or go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle Hornback would want them, and then pretty soon the ferry boat give it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a booming 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 13 Chapter 14 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fenn This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Adventures of Huckleberry Fenn by Mark Twain Chapter 14 By and by when we got up we turned over the truck the gang had stole off the wreck and found boots and blankets and clothes and all sorts of other things and a lot of books and a spy glass and three boxes of seagars. We had never been this rich before in neither of our lives, the seagars was prime. We laid off all afternoon in the woods talking and me reading books and having 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, but 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 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 shore. 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 there was so many on them. I ain't heard about none of them, scarcely but old King Solomon, unless you count them kings to send a pack of cards. How much do a king get? Get, 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 have you talked? It just sat around. No, is that so? Of course it is. They just sat 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 sp- Did you hear a noise? We skipped out and looked, but it weren't nothing but the flutter of a steam boat's wheel away down, coming around 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, he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang around the harem. Round the witch? Harem? What's the harem? The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? Solomon had one. He had about a million wives. Why, yes that's so. I done forgot it. A harem's a balden house, I reckon. Most likely they had rackety times in the nursery. And I reckon the wives quarreled considerable, and that creates the racket. Yet they say Solomon the wisest man that ever lived. I don't take no stock in that. Because why? Would a wise man want to live in the midst of such a blim-blamin' all the time? No, deed he wouldn't. A wise man had taken Bill a byler factory, and then he could shut down the byler factory when he wanted to rest. Well, but he was the wisest man anyway, because the widder she told me so her own self. I don't care what the widders say, he warn't no wise man another. He had some of the dad-fetchin'est ways I ever see. Do you know about that child that he was going to chop into? Yes, the widder told me all about it. Well, then, warn't that the beatin'est notion in the world, you just take and look at it a minute. There's the stump. There, that's one of the women. Here's you. That's the other one. I's Solomon. And this year dollar Bill's the child. Both a new claims it. What does I do? Does I shin' around amongst the neighbors and find out which of you the Bill belongs to, and 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, too, and give half on it to you, and the other half to the other woman. That's the way Solomon was going to do with the child. Now, I want to ask you, what's the use in half a Bill? Can't buy nothin' with it. In what use is half a child? I wouldn't give a darn for a million of them. But hang it, jam you, clean Mr. Point. Blame it, you missed it by a thousand miles. Who, me? Go long. Don't talk to me about your pints. I reckon I know sense when I seize it, and there ain't no sense in such doings as that. Dispute warn't about half a child. Dispute by the whole child. And the man that think he can settle the dispute by the whole child with a half a child. Don't know enough to come in out the rain. Don't talk to me about Solomon, Huck. I know him by the back. But I tell you, you don't get the point. Blame the point. I reckon I know what I know. In my new, the real pint 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 children. Is that man going to be wasteful of children? No, he ain't. He can't afford it. He knows how to value him. But you take a man that's got about five million children running around the house, and it's different. He'll soon chop a child into as a cat. There's plenty more. A child of two more less won't no consequence to Solomon. Dad fetch him. I'd never seen such a nigger if he got a notion in his head once there weren't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon, if any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that 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 pretty lonesome. There ain't no kings here, is there, Huck? Nope. Then he can't get no situation. What 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 they said. Not a single word. Well, now, I'd be dinged busted. How did that come? I don't know, but it's so. I got some of their japper out of a book. Suppose a man was to come to you and say, Pollyvue Franzi, what would you think? I wouldn't think nothing. I'd take him 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 you say it? Why, he is a saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it. Well, it's a brain-ridiculous way, and I don't want to hear no more about it. There ain't no sense in it. Looky here, 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? Of course. And 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 manhook? No. Well, then, there ain't no sense in the 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 or 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 that. I see it warn't no use wasting words. You can't learn a nigger to argue, so I quit. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Of The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. 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 come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most 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 hands 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 alright as far as it went, but the tow head weren't 60 yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid white fog, and had no more idea which way I was going than a dead man. Thinks I it won't do the paddle. First I know I'll run into the bank or a tow head or something. I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I whooped and listened. A way down there somewhere I hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I weren't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it, and the next time I was heading away to the left of it, and not gaining on it much either, for I was flying around this way and that and 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 hoops that was making the trouble for me. Well I fought along, and directly I hears the whoop behind me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around. I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again. It was behind me yet, but in a different place. It kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept answering till by and by it was in front of me again, and I know the current had swung the canoe's 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-boomin' 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 reckoned I didn't draw breath while it thumped a hundred. I'd just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an island, and Jim had gone down to other side of it. It warn't no towhead that you could float behind ten minutes. It had the big timber 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 fifteen minutes I reckon. I was floating along, of 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, 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 a half an hour, I hoops now and then, and at last I hears the answer a long ways off and tries to follow it. But I couldn't do it, and directly I judged I got into a nest of towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel in between. And some that I couldn't see I knowed was there, because I'd hear the washer that occurred against the old dead brush and trash then hung over the banks. Well, I weren't long losing the hoops down amongst the towheads, and I only tried to chase them a little while anyway, because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. You never know to sound dodge around so and swap places so quick and so much. I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river, and so I judged the raft must be buttoned 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 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 woke up the stars were shining bright, and the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend, stern first. First, I didn't know where it was. I thought I was dreaming, and when things began to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last week. It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and 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 weren't nothing but a couple of saw logs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chase that, 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 fists out against Jim, and says, Hello Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stare me up? Goodness gracious, is that you, Huck? And you ain't dead, you ain't drowned, used back again? It's too good for true, honey, it's too good for true. Let me look at your child, let me feel all you. No, you ain't dead, used 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 been gone away? Huck. Huck, Finn, you look me into eye. Look me into eye. Ain't you been gone away? Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I ain't been gone anywhere. 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 want 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 told out the line in the canoe for to make fast on 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 the line pull loose and the raft go a-hummin' down the river and leave you in the canoe behind in the fog? What fog? Why, the fog, the fog that's been round all night. And didn't you whoop and didn't I whoop till we got mixed up in the islands and one of us got lost and the other was just as good as lost, because he didn't know where he was, and didn't I bust up again a lot in them islands and have a terrible time and most get drowned? No, 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 nor no islands nor no troubles nor nothing. I've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I'd 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 want to dream old Dad in ten minutes? Well, hanging on, you did dream it because there didn't any of it happen. But, Hulk, 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 didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but sat there studying over it. And then he says, well, did I reckon I did dream it, Hulk, but dogs, my cats, if it ain't the powerfulest dream I ever see. And I ain't ever had no dream before that's tired of 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 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 and interpret it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first towhead 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 hoops 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 towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks. But, if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't have no more trouble. It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got onto the raft, but it was clearing up again now. Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim, I says. But what does these things stand for? It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed ore. You could see them first rate now. Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the 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 would work and with the calling 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 in the raft, and 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 so thankful, and all you was thinking about was how could you make a fool of old Jim with a lie? That truck down is trash, and trash is what people is that puts dirt on the head of day friends and make 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 fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger, but I'd done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't have done that one if I'd have known it would make him feel that way. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Dianne Jines, Salt Lake City, Utah. 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 going by as a procession. She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flagpole at each end. There was a power of 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 say 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 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 scowl, 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 we 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 seen 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, Da she is, but it weren't. It was Jack Lantern's or Lightning Bugs, so he sat down again and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish too, to hear him, because I begun to get it 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 how nor no way. It got to troubling 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 weren't to blame because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner, but it weren't no use, conscience 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. Conscience says to me, what had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger 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. 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 almost wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced around and says, does Cairo, it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo, I reckoned 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 their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an abolitionist to go and steal them. It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared 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. Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as help to run away, coming right out flat-footed 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 stirring me up hotter than ever till at last I says to it, let up on me. It ain't too late yet. I'll paddle ashore 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 sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself, by and by, one showed. Jim sings out, we's safe, Huck, we's safe. Jump up and crack your heels. That's the good old Cairo at last. I just knows it. I says I'll take the canoe and go and see Jim. It mightn't be, you know. He jumped and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on and give me the paddle. And as I shoved off, he says, pretty soon I'll be a shouting for joy. And I'll say it's all on accounts of Huck. I's 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. Yo's 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 or 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? A 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 words wouldn't come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it. But I weren'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 ma'am 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 buckled 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 to say, boy, what's the matter with your father? It's the the well, it ain't anything much. They stopped pulling. It weren'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 us, please. It's the the gentleman. If you'll only pull ahead and let me he view the headline, you won't have to come near the raft. Please do. Set her back, John. Set her back, says one. They backed water. Keep away, boy. Keep till Lord. Confound it. 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, look 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 down about 20 miles and you'll come to a town on the left hand side of the river. It will be long after sunup 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. It wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is. It's only a woodyard. 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 weren'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 learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and 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 weren't there. I looked all around. He weren't anywhere. I says, Jim, here I is. Huck is day 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 were out of sight. So he come aboard. He says I was a listening to all the talk and I slips into the river and was going to shove for show if they come aboard. Then I was going to swim to that raft again when they was gone. But Lassie, how you did fool them, Huck. That was the smartest dodge. I tell you, child, I speck it, save old Jim. Old Jim ain't going to forget you for that, honey. Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise, twenty dollars apiece. Jim said we could take 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 twenty mile more weren't far for the raft to go, but he wished he was already there. Towards daybreak we tied up and Jim was mighty 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 in sight 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 setting a trot line. I ranged up and says, Mr., is that town Cairo? Cairo, no. You must be a blame fool. What town is it, Mr.? If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here, bothering around me for about a 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 about 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 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. Poe-nickers can't have no luck. I always expected that rattlesnake skin weren't done with its work. I wish I'd never seen that snakeskin, Jim. I do wish I'd never lay 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 it was all up with Cairo. We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take the shore. We couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. There weren'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 weren't anything to say. We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake skin. So what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was finding 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 weren'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 weren't going to borrow it when there weren't anybody around, the way PEP 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 a 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. It 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 didn'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 shearing 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 over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow 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 thirty-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 ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen. So now she was turning 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 treading 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 clumped up the bank. I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over roughed 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 howling and barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg. End of chapter 16.