 CHAPTER 10 WHAT COMES OF HANNELAND SNAKESCAN 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 weren'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 knowed who shot the man and what they 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 knowed 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 and I found it on top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said 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 had some bad luck like this every day, Jim. Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you get too perked? 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 varmit curled up and ready for another attack. I laid him out in a second with a stick and Jim grabbed pap's whiskey jug and begun to pour it down. He was barefooted and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes to my being such a fool as to not remember that whenever 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 ate it and said it would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his waist, too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed the snake's clear away amongst the bushes, for I wasn'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 suck in 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 paps whiskey. Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I made it my mind I wouldn't ever take a hold of a snake's skin again with my hands now that I see what it'd become of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him the 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 in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself. 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 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. 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 almost the first thing we'd done was to bait one of the big hooks with the 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 a big fish, as ever catched in the Mississippi. I reckoned, 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 fish as that by the pound in the market house there. Everybody buys some of them. His meat's 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 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 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 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 it in my britch's 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 would took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty years old in there knitting by a candle that was on the 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 what I really wanted to know. So I knocked on the door and made it my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl. End of chapter 10 CHAPTER 11 OF THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FIN. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Catherine Millward. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FIN. By Mark Twain. CHAPTER 11. THERE AFTER US. Come in, says the woman, and I did. She says, take a cheer. I done it. She looked me all over with her 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 more. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I ain't never 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 waste to the upper end of 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 was, and how they didn't know, but they'd made a mistake coming to our town instead of letting well and lone, and so on, and so on, till I was a fear that I'd made a mistake coming here 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 in Hookerville, but we don't know who twuzz that killed Huck Finn. Well, I reckon there's a right, smart chance of people here that like to know who killed him, something old Finn done it himself. No, is that so? Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come to be inlynched, but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named 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 Hook 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 in the ferry boat 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 about 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 looking for him back till this thing blows over a little. For people thinks now that he killed this boy, and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it. And then he'd get Hook's money without having to bother a long time with the lawsuit. People do say he weren't any 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 by then, and he'll walk in Hook's money as easy as nothing. Yes, I reckon so. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it? Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get the nigger pretty soon now. Maybe they could 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 to that island over yonder, and 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 it's 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 to go over and see him in 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 threaten it. My hands 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, $300 is the 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 they was to wait till daytime? Yes, and couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight, he'll likely be asleep, and they could 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 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 at you. I wish that woman would say something more. The longer she set steel, the uneasier I was. But now she says, honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come 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 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. 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 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 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 went on talking about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say, keep your eye on the rats. He better have the lead in your lap, handy. So she dropped the lump into my lap, just at that moment. And I clasped 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, mum? 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 girl like me, mum. If I'm in the way here, I'll know you won't. Sit down, 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 wanted to, you see, you're a runway 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. That's a good boy. So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it out 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 meat 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 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 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 had 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 for 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. But she then 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 15 cows is browsing on the hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed in the same direction? The whole 15, mom. Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to focus me again. What's your real name now? George Peters, 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 it a girl tall or 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 to 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 arms 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 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 clamp them together the way you did when you catch the lump of lead. Well, 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 will be in condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon. I went up the bank about 50 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 sunbonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on that. 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 boast-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. They're 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. I didn't show a candle outside after that. I took the canoe out from the shore a little peace 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 of the raft and slipped along in the shade. Past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Catherine Millward. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 12. Better Let Blame Well Alone. 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 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 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. 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 and the fire never fooled them, it weren't no fold 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 towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so that she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A towhead is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as herald teeth. We had mountains on the Missouri shore, and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down in 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 steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and upbound steamboats 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 towhead 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 could keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering oar, too, 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 what they call a crossing. For the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water, 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 never feel like talking loud, and it wasn't often that we laughed. Only a little kind of 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 passed towns, some of them away up on 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 weren'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, 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 easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see Pap 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 mush melon, or a pumpkin, or some new corn or things of that kind. Pap always said it weren't no harm to borrow things if he was meaning to pay them back some time. But the widow said it weren'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 watermelon, or the cantaloupes, or the mush 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 for that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it came out, too, because crab apples ain't ever good, and the persimmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet. We shot the 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 the 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. Bye and bye, says I. Hello, Jim, looky yonder. It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. She 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 old 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 seen 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 her go foolin' long or no whack. We do and blame well, and we better let blame well alone, as the good book says. Like is not, days of watchmen on that rack. Watchmen, your grandmother, I says. There ain't nothing to watch but the Texas and the pilot house. 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 havin' out of the captain's stateroom. Seagars, I bet you, and cost five cents apiece, sell a cash. Steamboat captains is always rich and get $60 a month, and they don't care a cent what a thing costs. You know, as long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket. I can't resist Jim till we get 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 he'd 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 stop at Derrick and made fast there. The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to Le Borde in the dark toward 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. 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, the way down through the Texas hall we see 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, it'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've swore it, if you didn't get it, 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 the time Jim was gone for the raft, I was just abilling 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 dark till there weren't, but one stateroom 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. The one kept pointing his pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying, I'd like to, and I ordered to, I mean skunk. The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, oh, please don't, Bill, I ain't never gonna tell. And every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say, did you ain't? You ever said no truer thing in that, you bet you? And once he said, here in bag, and yet if we hadn't gotten the best of him and tied him, he'd kill us both. And what for? Just for nothing, just because we stood on our rights, that's what for. But I lay you ain't a goin' to threaten nobody, no more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill. Bill says, I don't want to, Jake Packard, I'm for killin' 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 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 toward where I was there in the dark and motion-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 as to keep from getting run over and catched. I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The men came upon along in the dark and when Packard got to my stateroom 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'd 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 whiskey they'd been havin'. I was glad I didn't drink whiskey, but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn't have trained 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 he was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row in the way we've served him. Shores you're born, he'll turn states evidence. Now you hear me, I'm for puttin' him out of his troubles. So my, says Packard, very quiet. Blame it, I'd sorta 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 said 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' around after a halter if you can get it 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 around and gather up whatever pickings we've overlooked in the state rooms and shove for sure 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 and won't have nobody to blame for it, but his own self. I reckon that's a considerable sight better in 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 darkest pitch there, but I said in a kind of coarse whisper, Jim, and he answers up right at my elbow with a sort of moan and sigh says, quick, Jim, and ain't no time for foolin' around and moanin'. There's a gang of murderers in Yonder and if we don't hunt up their boat instead of 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. But if we find their boat, we can put all of them in a bad fix. For the sheriff, we'll get him, quick, hurry. I'll hunt the labyrinth side. You hunt the stopper. You start the raft and, oh, my lordy, lordy raft. That ain't no raft, no moan. She done broke loose and gone. And here we is, end of chapter 12. Chapter 13 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Sage. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 13. Well, I catched my breath and almost fainted, shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that, but it weren't no time to be sentimental-ing. We got to find that boat now, had to have it for ourselves. So we went a quakin' and a shakin' down the stabbered side and slow work it was, too. It 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 had 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 scrabbled 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. In another second I'd have 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 bag of something into the boat and then got it himself and set down. It was Packard. Then Bill, he come out and got it. Packard says in a low voice, already shove off. I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutter as I was so weak. But Bill says, hold on, do 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, but we gotta have it anyway. Come along. So they got out and went in. The door slammed too because it was on the Kareen 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 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 know by that that the rascal 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 is the first time that I've begun to worry about the men I reckon 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, I ain't no telling, but I might come to be a murderer myself yet and then how'd I like it? So I says to Jim, the first light we see will land 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 up and fix 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, but 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 up 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 my to glad was we to get a board of it again. We seen a 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 stowed there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile and I told Jim to float long down and show a light when he judged he had gone about a 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 a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shorelight and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by, I see it was a lantern hanging on the jack staff of a double hull ferry boat. 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 a kinda startlish way but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch and then he said, hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble? I says, half and mam and sis and then I broke down. He says, aw, dang it. Now don't take on so. We all has to have our troubles and this one will come out all right. What's the matter with them? 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 deckhand and sometime I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim Hornback and I can't be so blamed generous and good to Tom, Dick and Harry as what he is and slam around money the way he does but I told him many a time I wouldn't trade places with him. Four says I, a sailor's life's the life for me and I'm darned if I'd live two mile out of town where there ain't nothing ever going on not for all his spondylicks and as much more on top of it says I. I broke in and says they're in an awful peck of trouble and who is? Why, mam and pap 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. What, you don't mean the wall to Scott? Yes, good land. What are they doing there for gracious sakes? Well, they didn't go their purpose. I bet they didn't. Why, great goodness there ain't no chance for them 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 visiting up there to the town. Yes, Booth's Landing, gone. She was a visiting there at Booth's Landing and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the Halsferry to stay all night at her friend's house. Miss what you may call her, I disremember her name. And they lost their steering-aw and swung around and went afloatin' down, sterned first about two miles and saddled bags on the wreck and the ferriman 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 came along down in our trade in the scowl and it was dark. We didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it and so we sat her bags but all of us were saved by Bill Whipple and oh, he was the best creta. I most wished it had been me I'd do. By 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 couldn't make nobody here. So Pap said somebody gotta 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 a night, in such a current there ain't no sense in it. Go for the steam ferret. Now, if you'll go in by 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're 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 yonder way 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 Hornbacks and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool around any cause he'll wanna 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 rouse 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 600 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 feelin' rather comfortable on accounts of takin' all this trouble for that gang for not many woulda done it. I wished the widow noted. I judged she'd be proud of me for helpin' these rapscallions cause rapscallions and deadbeats is the kind the widow and good people take the most interest in. Well, before long here comes the wreck. Dim and dusky, slidein' along down. A kinda 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 bein' alive in her. I pulled all around her and haulered 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 the captain would know her uncle Hormback would want him. And then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up and went for 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 beginin' to get a little gray in the east so we struck for an island and hid the raft and sunk the skip and turned in and slept like dead people. End of Chapter 13 Recording by Bob Sage Chapter 14 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Sage. 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 seagulls. We had never been this rich before in neither of our lives. The seagulls 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 as 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 anyway it could be fixed. Fall if he didn't get saved he'd get drowned in 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 Negro. I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such and how guardy 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 him. I ain't heard about none of them scarcely but old king Solomon unless you can't stem kings that's in 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 day got to do, Huck? They don't do nothing. Why how you talk? They just set around. No, is that so? Course it is. They just set around. Except maybe when there's a wall then they go to the wall but other times they just lazy around or go hawking, just hawking and sp- Do you hear a noise? We skipped out and looked but it weren't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel away down coming round the point so we come back. Yes says I and other times when things is dull they fuss with their parliament and if everybody don't go just so he wax their heads off but mostly they hang round the haram. Round the which? Haram. What's the haram? The place where he keeps his wise. Don't you know about a haram? Solomon had one. He had about a million wives. Why yes, that's so I I don't forget it. A hamza, bouldin' house I reckon. Most likely they has racketed times in the nursery and I reckon the wives' quals considerable and that crease the racket. Yet they say Solomon the wisest man to ever live. I don't take no stock in that because why? Why would a man want to live in the midst of such a blim blammin' all the time? No, deed he wouldn't. A wise man to take and build a bylaw factory and then he could shut down the bylaw factory when he want to rest. Well, but he was the wisest man anyway cause the widow she told me so her own self. I don't care what the widow say. He want no wise man another. He had some of the dad-fetchedest ways I ever seen. Does you know about that child that he was grindin' to choppin' too? Yes, the widow told me all about that. Well then, want that the beatin'est notion in the world? You just take and look at it a minute. That's the stump-dow. That's one of the women. Yes, you. That's the other one, I, Solomon, and this, yeah, dollar bills to child. Beforein' you claims it, what does I do? Does I shin' around amongst the neighbors and find out which in you the bill do belong to and hand it over to the right one, all safe and sound? The way anybody that had any gumption would? No, I take and whack the bill in two and give half on it to you and the other half to the other woman. That's the way Solomon was grindin' to do with the child. Now, I wanna ask you, what's the use of that half a bill? Can't buy nothin' with it? And what use is a half a child? I wouldn't give a darn for a million of them. But hang it, Jim, you clean missed the point. Blame it, you missed it a thousand miles. Who, me, go on. Don't talk to me about your pints. I reckon I know sense and I see it. And they ain't no sense in such doings as that. The spute was about a half a child. The spute was about a whole child. And the man that think he can settle a spute by the whole child with a half a child don't know enough to come in out of rain. Don't talk to me about Solomon hook. I know him by the back. But I tell ya, you don't get the point. Blame the point. I reckon I know what I know. And mind you, the real point is further. It's down deeper. It lays into way Solomon was raised. You take a man that got only one or two chillin'? Is that man gonna be wasteful of chillin'? No, he ain't. He can't fault it. He knows how to value him. But you take a man that's got about five million chillin' running round the house and it's different. He is soon chop a child in two as a cat. There's plenty more. A child or two, more or less, warrant no consequence to Solomon. Dad fetch him. I never see such a knee grow. If he got a notion in his head once there weren't no gettin' it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any knee grow I ever seen. So I went to talkin' about other kings and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis 16th that got his head cut off in France long time ago and about his little boy, the dolphin. That would be a king. But they took and shut him up in jail and some say he died there. Paul the little chap. But some says he got out and got away and come to America. That's good, but he'll be pretty lonesome. They ain't no kings here, is they, Huck? No, then he can't get no situation. What he gonna 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've been ding-busted. How did that come? Now, I don't know, but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. Suppose a man was to come to you and say, Paulie Vufranci, what would you think? I wouldn't think nothin'. I'd take and bust him over the head. That is, if you weren't white, I wouldn't allow no Negro to call me that. Shucks, it ain't callin' you anything. It's only sayin' do you know how to talk French. Well, then, why couldn't he say it? Why, he is a sayin' it. That's the French man's way of sayin' it. Well, it's a blame-ridiculous way and I don't wanna hear no more about it. There ain't no sense in it. Look here, Jim, does a cat talk like we do? No, a cat don't. Well, does a cow? No, a cow don't another. 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? 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 French man 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? 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 French man a man? Yes. Well, then, dad, blame it. Why don't he talk like a man? You answer me that. I see it won't no use wasting words. You can't learn a negro to argue, so I quit. End of chapter 14, recording by Bob Sage. 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. Recording by Bob Sage. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, chapter 15. We judge that three nights Maud fetches the Cairo at the bottom of Illinois where the Ohio River comes in and that was what we was after. We'd sell 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 of fog began to come on and we made for a tall 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 round 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 and away she went. I see the fog closing down and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a 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 grab 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, but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with her. As soon as I got started, I took out after the raft hot and heavy right down the towhead. That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead 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 gone than a dead man. Thinks I. It won't do the paddle. First, I know I'll run into the bank or a towhead or something. I gotta 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. Away down there somewhere as I here's a small hoop and up comes my spits. I went down after it, listening sharp to hear it again. 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 whoops that was making the trouble for me. Well I fought along and directly I hear the whoop behind me. I is tangled good now. Now somebody else's whoop or else I was turned around. I throw 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 but 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 back 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 set perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump and I reckoned I didn't draw breath while it thumped a hundred. I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut back was an island and Jim had gone down the other side of it. It wasn't no towhead that you could float by in 10 minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island. Must be five or six miles and more than half a mile wide. I kept quiet with my ears cocked about 15 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 don't think to yourself how fast you're going but you catch your breath and think my, how that snags tan along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in the fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once, you'll see. Next for about a half an hour, whoops now and then. 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'd 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 know was there because I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I want long loosen the hoops down amongst the toe heads 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 round 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 a 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 whiz. 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 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'd take just one little catnip. But I reckon it was more than a catnip but when I waked up the stars were shining bright. The fog was all gone and I was spinning down a big Ben's 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 dim out of last week. It was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of Timbond both banks just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars. I looked the way downstream and seen a black speck on the water. I took after it but when I got to it there 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 aw. The other aw 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 and 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? Use 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. You ain't dead, use back again. Living sound just the same old Huck, the same old Huck, thanks to goodness. What's the matter with you Jim? You been a drinking? Has I been a drinking? Has I had a chance to be a drinking? Well then, what makes you so wild? How, does I talk wild? How, why hate you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if I'd been gone away? Huck, Huck Finn, you look me in the eye, look me in the eye, hate you been gone away, gone away, why, what in the nation do you mean? I ain't been gone anyways, where would I go to? Well, look at here boss, there's something wrong, there is. Is I me or who is I? Is I here or what is I? Now, that's what I wanna know. Well, I think you're here plain enough but I think you're a tangled headed old fool Jim. I is, is I? Well, you answer me this, didn't you towed out the line in the canoe for to make fast to the towhead? No, I didn't, what towhead? I ain't seen no towhead. You ain't seen no towhead? Look at here, didn't the line pull loose in the raft, go humming down the river and leave you in the canoe behind in the fog? What fog? 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 in the islands and one of us got lost and the other one was just as good as lost cause he didn't know why he was. And didn't I bust up again a lot of them islands and have a terrible time and most get drowned? 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 or no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about 10 minutes ago and I reckon I've 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. 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 didn't 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 ain't been ever had no dream before that's tied me out 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 and it was considerable. Then he said he must start in and interpret it because it was sent him 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 whoops were 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 gonna get into with qualsome 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 oil. You could see them first right 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 place again right away. But when he did get the thing straight in the raft he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says what did they stand for? I was going to tell you. When I got all wore out with 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 became of me and 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 you could make a fool of old Jim with a lie. That truck down is trash and trash is what people is that puts dirt in the head or dead 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 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a negro but I'd done it and I weren't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks and I wouldn't done that one if I didn't know that would make him feel that way. End of Chapter 15, Recording by Bob Sage. Chapter 16 of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bob Sage. 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 30 men likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart and an open campfire 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 are 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 grating 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's 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, dashy is, but it won't. It was jack-o'-lanterns or lightning bugs. So he sat down again and went to watchin' same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembling and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembling 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 troublein' 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 doin' but now it did and it stayed with me and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I warrant to blame because I didn't run Jim off his rightful owner but it warrant no use. Conscience up and says every time but you knowed he was runnin' for his freedom and you could have paddled the shore 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 Negro 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 in every way she knowed how. That's what she done. I got to feelin' 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 said, dies Cairo, it went through me like a shock and I thought if it was Cairo I reckon I would die of miserableness. Jim talked out loud all the while I was talkin' to myself. He was sayin' how the first thing he was doin' he got free, he would go to savin' 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'd both work to buy the two children and if their master wouldn't sell him they'd get an abolitionist to go and steal him. It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever 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 Negro an inch and he'll take an L. Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinkin'. Here was a Negro which I had as good as help to run away, comin' right out flat-footed and sayin' 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, let up on me. It ain't too late. 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 lookin' out sharp for a light and sort of singin' to myself by and by one show. Jim sings out, we safe, Huck, we 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 see Jim. It mightn't be, you know. He jumped up 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 shappin' for joy. And I'll say it's all on a counts 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. You 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 kinda 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, da you goes, the old true Huck, the only white gentleman to ever kept his promise to old Jim. Well, I just felt sick but I says, I gotta do it. I can't get out of it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns and they stop and I stop. One of them says, what's that yonder? A piece of raft I said, do you belong on it? Yes, sir. Any men on it? Only one, sir. Well, there's five Negroes run off tonight 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 packed, it's there and maybe you'd help me tow the raft to shore where the light is. He's sick and so is ma'am and Marianne. Oh, the devil, we're on 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 lay to their oars. When we had made a stroke or two, I says, pap will be mighty much a bleach to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes away when I want them to help me tow the raft to shore 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, uh, the, well it ain't anything much. They stop 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 better for you. I will sir, I will honest but don't leave us please. It's the gentleman if you'll only pull ahead and let me heave you the headline. You won't have to come near the raft, please do. Sit her back, John, sit her back says one. They backwater, keep away boy, keep to Lord. 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? You wanna spread it all over? Well, says I, 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 and you'll smash everything to pieces. You float along down about 20 miles and you come to a town on the left hand side of the river. It'll 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's 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 be any good to land yonder with the lighties. 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 it might have mean to leave you, but my kingdom, it won't do the fool with smallpox, don't you see? Hold on Parker, says the 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 Negroes, you get help and nab them. You can make some money by it. Goodbye, sirs, says I. I won't let no runaway Negroes 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 was 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 I says to myself, hold on, suppose you done right and give Jim up. Would you feel better than you do now? No, says I. I'd feel bad. I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well then, says I, was the use you learned 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. That was stuck. I couldn't answer that so I reckon I wouldn't bother no more about it but after this always do whichever comes handiest at the time. I went into the wigwam. Jim weren't there. I looked around. He weren't anywhere. I says, Jim, here I is, hook. Is there out of sight yet? Don't talk loud. He was in the river under the stern all with just his nose out. I told him they were out of sight so he'd come aboard. He says, I was a listening to all the talk and I slips into the river and was grind to shove for shove they come aboard. Then I was grind to swim to the raft again when they was gone but loyally how you did fool them, hook. That was the smartest dodge. I tell you, child, I spec it save old Jim. Old Jim ain't gonna forget you for that, honey. Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise, $20 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 20 mile more weren't far for the raft to go but he wished we was already there. Towards daybreak we tied up and Jim was mad at 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 10, we hold inside of the lates of the town way down in the 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. Arranged up and says, mister, is that Cairo? Cairo, no, you must be a blame fool. What town is it, mister? If you wanna know, go and find out. If you stay here bothering around me 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 reckon. 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 began 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. Poor Negroes can't have no luck. I all expected that rattlesnake skin weren't done with its work. I wish I'd never seen that snake skin, Jim. I do wish I'd 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 it was all up with Cairo. We talked it over. It wouldn't do to take the shore. We couldn't take the raft up the stream of costs. There weren't no way but to wait for dark and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So it slept all day among 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. That weren't anything to say. We both know it well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake skin. So what was the use of talk about it? It would only look like we was fine and fought, 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 that we got a chance to buy a canoe and go back in. We weren't gonna borrow it when there weren't anybody around the way Pap would but 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 mall 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 doing three hours and more. Well the night got gray and rather thick which is the next meanest thing to fall. 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 reef 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 smart. Well here she comes and we said she was gonna 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 over us. There was a yell at us and a jingling of bells to stop the engine. A pow wow of cussing and whistling of steam and as Jim went overboard on one side and I and the other she comes smashing straight through the raft. I dived and I aimed to find the bottom two for a 30 foot wheel had got to go over me and I wanted to have plenty of room. I could always stay underwater 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 boom in current and of course the boat started her engines again 10 seconds after she stopped them for they never cared much for raftsmen. So 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 crabbed the plank and touched me while I was treading water and struck out for shore shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see 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 those 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 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 gonna 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.