Huckleberry Finn - Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (reading books for 7 year olds TXT) 📗

it was across from me I see there weren’t but one man in it. Thinks I, maybe it’s pap, but I wasn’t thinking it would be him. He dropped below me with the movement of the river, and by and by he came up close to the beach in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the rifle and touched him. Well, it was pap, sure enough -- and he weren’t drunk, too, by the way he was using his oars.

 

I didn’t lose no time. The next minute I was a-moving down river soft but fast in the darkness of the high ground on the side of the river. I made two mile and a half, then pushed out four hundred yards or more toward the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the boat landing on this side of the river, and people might see me and call out to me. I got out where all the logs were moving along, and then got down in the bottom of the canoe for a good rest, and let her go without oars.

 

 

I had a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the light of the moon; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too -- every word of it. One man said it was getting toward the long days and the short nights now. T’other one said this weren’t one of the short ones, the way he saw it -- and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another man and told him, and laughed, but he didn’t laugh; he shouted out something bad, and said let him alone.

 

The first man said he wanted to tell it to his old woman -- she would think it was pretty good; but he said that weren’t nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o’clock, and he hoped morning wouldn’t wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got farther and farther away, and I couldn’t make out the words any more; but I could hear the sound of them talking, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long way off.

 

I was way below the ferry now. I put my head up, and there was Jackson’s Island, about two miles and a half down river, covered with trees and standing up out of the middle, big and dark and solid, like a big ship without any lights. There weren’t any signs of the sand at the head of it -- it was all under water.

It didn’t take me long to get there. I flew past the head because the water was moving so quickly, but then I got into the dead water and landed on the side toward Illinois. I run the canoe into a deep opening in the short cliff that hangs over the river on that side, that I knowed about; I had to separate the willow branches to get in; and when I tied up nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside.

 

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The sun was up so high when I came awake that I judged it was after eight o’clock. I stayed there lying in the cool of the grass thinking about things, and feeling rested and pretty comfortable and happy. I could see the sun out of one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and dark in there under them all. There was spots on the ground where the light come down through the leaves, and the spots moved about a little, showing there was a little wind up there. Two squirrels sat on a branch and talked at me very friendly.

 

 

I was powerful lazy and comfortable -- didn’t want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was falling off to sleep again when I thinks I hears a deep sound of a cannon going off away up the river. I lifts up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I jumped up, and went and looked out at an opening in the willows, and I seen a lot of smoke laying on the water a long way up -- about opposite the ferry. And there was the ferry full of people moving along down. I knowed what was happening now. “Bang!” I see the white smoke explode out of the boat’s side. You see, they was shooting a cannon over the water, trying to make my dead body come to the top.

 

I was pretty hungry, but it weren’t going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. So I sat there and watched the cannon smoke and listened to the noise. The river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning -- so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my dead body if I only had a bite to eat.

 

Well, then I happened to think how they always put liquid metal in loaves of bread and put them on top of the water because they always go right to where the body went down and stop there. So, says I, I’ll keep a looking, and if any of them comes around after me I’ll give 'em a show. I changed to the Illinois side of the island to see what luck I could have, and I weren’t wrong. One of them loaves come along, and I almost got it with a long stick, but my foot give way and she moved out farther into the river. I was where the movement of the water come in the closest to the land -- I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I won. I shook out the little liquid metal that was in it, and put my teeth in. It was wheat bread -- what the quality people eat; none of your poor man’s corn bread.

 

I got a good place in behind the willows, and sat there on a log, chewing the bread and watching the ferry boat, and feeling very good. And then something hit me. I says, now the way I see it, the widow or the pastor or someone prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. So there’s no arguing that there is something in that thing -- that is, there’s something in it when a body like the widow or the pastor prays; but it just don’t work for me, and the way I see it, it don’t work for only just the right kind.

 

I took out my pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The ferry boat was just following the movement of the river, and I believed I’d be able to see who was on it when she come along, because she would come in close, the way the bread did. When she had got pretty well along down toward me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread, and got down behind a big log on the side of the river, in a little open place. Where the log forked I could look through.

 

By and by she come along, and she come in so close that they could a run out a long board and walked to the land. Most everybody was on the boat: Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and a lot more. Everybody was talking about the killing, but the man who owned the boat cut in and says: “Look close, now; the water movement comes in the closest here, and maybe he’s washed up and got caught up in the bushes growing at the side of the water. I hope so, anyway.”

 

I didn’t hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the side of the boat, nearly in my face, and kept quiet, watch- ing with all their might. I could see them clear as anything, but they couldn’t see me. Then the man running the boat shouted out: “Stand away!” and the cannon let off such an explosion right before me that it destroyed my hearing with the noise and pretty near made me blind with the smoke, and I judged I was gone. If they’d a had a cannon ball in, they would a got the dead body they was after. Well, I see I weren’t hurt, thank God. The boat moved on and went around the shoulder of the island to where I couldn’t see it. I could hear the explosions now and then, farther and farther off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn’t hear it no more. The island was three miles long. I judged they had got to the foot of it, and was giving it up. But they didn’t yet for a while. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the river on the Missouri side, with the motor going, and shooting every once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got to the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri side and went back home to the town.

 

I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me. I got my rabbit traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thickest part of the trees. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn’t get at them. I caught a fish and cleaned him with my saw blade, and toward dark I started my camp fire and had a nice meal. Then I put out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.

 

When it was dark I sat by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty good; but by and by it got kind of boring, and so I went and sat on the side of the river and listened to the waves washing along, and counted the stars and the logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain’t no better way to put in time when you are bored; you can’t stay bored; you soon get over it.

 

And so it was for three days and nights. No difference -- just the same thing. But the next day I went looking around down through the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to speak, and I wanted to know all about it; but mostly I wanted to fill in the time. I found a lot of strawberries, big and red and ready to eat; and green summer grapes, and green berries was just starting to show. They would all be a help by and by, I judged.

 

Well, I went playing around deep in the trees until I judged I weren’t far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn’t killed nothing; it was just to protect me; I thought I would kill something to eat back closer to home. About this time I nearly stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went off through the grass and flowers, and me after it, hoping to shoot it. I ran along, and all by surprise, I come right onto the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.

 

 

My heart jumped up into my lungs. I never waited for to look farther, but went quietly back on my toes as fast as ever I