Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) 📗

CHAPTER XVI.

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole 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 warn’t but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn’t happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town?  Jim said if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show.  But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim—and me too.  So the question was, what to do?  I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo.  Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.

There warn’t nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it.  He said he’d be mighty sure to see it, because he’d be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it he’d be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom.  Every little while he jumps up and says:

“Dah she is?”

But it warn’t.  It was Jack-o’-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set down again, and went to watching, same as before.  Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it?  Why, me.  I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place.  It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.”  That was so—I couldn’t get around that noway.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word?  What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean?  Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how.  That’s what she done.”

I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.  I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me.  We neither of us could keep still.  Every time he danced around and says, “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.  He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk.  He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before.  Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free.  It was according to the old saying, “Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.”  Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking.  Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.  My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late yet—I’ll paddle ashore at the first light and tell.”  I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off.  All my troubles was gone.  I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself.  By and by one showed.  Jim sings out:

“We’s safe, Huck, we’s safe!  Jump up and crack yo’ heels!  Dat’s de good ole Cairo at las’, I jis knows it!”

I says:

“I’ll take the canoe and go and see, Jim.  It mightn’t be, you know.”

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:

“Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it.  Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.  I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t.  When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:

“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”

Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I got to do it—I can’t get out of it.  Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and I stopped.  One of them says:

“What’s that yonder?”

“A piece of a raft,” I says.

“Do you belong on it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any men on it?”

“Only one, sir.”

“Well, there’s five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend.  Is your man white or black?”

I didn’t answer up prompt.  I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t