Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
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CHAPTER XII.
IT must a been close on to one oāclock 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 didnāt come, for we hadnāt ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warnāt good judgment to put everything on the raft.
If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warnāt no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could.
When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a 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 she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.
We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warnāt afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound 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 wouldnāt set down and watch a camp fireāno, sir, sheād fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldnāt 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 a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldnāt be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the villageāno, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didnāt care what was the reason they didnāt get us as long as they didnāt.
When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering-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 down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldnāt have to light it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a ācrossingā; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didnāt always run the channel, but hunted easy water.
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four 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 didnāt ever feel like talking loud, and it warnāt often that we laughedāonly a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at allāthat night, nor the next, nor the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two oāclock that still night. There warnāt a sound there; everybody was asleep.
Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten oāclock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen centsā worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warnāt roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you donāt want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed aināt ever forgot. I never see pap when he didnāt 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 mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warnāt no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warnāt 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 wouldnāt borrow them any moreāthen he reckoned it wouldnāt be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and pāsimmons. We warnāt feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples aināt ever good, and the pāsimmons wouldnāt be ripe for two or three months yet.
We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didnāt go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, we lived pretty high.
The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, āHel-lo, Jim, looky yonder!ā It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when the flashes come.
Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there was there. So I says:
āLeās land on her, Jim.ā
But Jim was dead against it at first. He says:
āI doanā want to go foolān ālong er no wrack. Weās doinā blameā well, en we better let blameā well alone, as de good book says. Like as not deyās a watchman on dat wrack.ā
āWatchman your grandmother,ā I says; āthere aināt nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybodyās going to resk his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when itās likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?ā Jim couldnāt say nothing to that, so he didnāt try. "And besides,ā I says, āwe might borrow something worth having out of the captainās stateroom. Seegars, I bet youāand cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they donāt care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket; I canāt rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldnāt. Heād call it an adventureāthatās what heād call it; and heād land on that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldnāt he throw style into it?āwouldnāt he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, youād think it was Christopher Cālumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.ā
Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustnāt 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 stabboard derrick, and made fast there.
The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldnāt see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in front of the captainās door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem 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:
āOh, please donāt, boys; I swear I wonāt ever tell!ā
Another voice said, pretty loud:
āItās a lie, Jim Turner. Youāve acted this way before. You always want moreān your share of the truck, and youāve always got it, too, because youāve swore āt if you didnāt youād tell. But this time youāve said it jest one time too many. Youāre the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country.ā
By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldnāt back out now, and so I wonāt either; Iām a-going to see whatās going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till there warnāt 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
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