Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 11 to 15

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XII.

  IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island atlast, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to comealong we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore;and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put thegun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was inruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn't goodjudgment to put EVERYTHING on the raft.

  If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire Ibuilt, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayedaway from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't nofault 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 abig bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches withthe hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like therehad been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that hascottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

  We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinoisside, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so wewarn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, andwatched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, andup-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim allabout the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was asmart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set downand watch a camp fire--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 shedid think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believedthey must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, orelse we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below thevillage--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I saidI didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as theydidn't.

  When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of thecottonwood 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 wigwamto 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 thelevel of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reachof steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer ofdirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold itto 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 wemust always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat comingdown-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to lightit for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a"crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being stilla little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel,but hunted easy water.

  This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a currentthat was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, andwe took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind ofsolemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs lookingup at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn'toften that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. We hadmighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to usat all--that 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. Thefifth 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 thousandpeople in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderfulspread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a soundthere; everybody was asleep.

  Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some littlevillage, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or otherstuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roostingcomfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken whenyou get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easyfind somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never seepap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used tosay, anyway.

  Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed awatermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things ofthat kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you wasmeaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anythingbut a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim saidhe reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so thebest way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the listand say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned it wouldn't beno 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 todrop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. Buttowards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded todrop crabapples and p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that,but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too,because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripefor two or three months yet.

  We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning ordidn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, welived pretty high.

  The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with apower of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solidsheet. 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, "Hel-LO, Jim,looky yonder!" It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. Wewas drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her verydistinct. 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 chairby the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, whenthe 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 wrecklaying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. Iwanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what therewas there. So I says:

  "Le's land on her, Jim."

  But Jim was dead against it at first. He says:

  "I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. We's doin' blame' well, enwe better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey'sa watchman on dat wrack."

  "Watchman your grandmother," I says; "there ain't nothing to watch butthe texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to reskhis life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it'slikely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" Jim couldn'tsay nothing to that, so he didn't try. "And besides," I says, "we mightborrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. Seegars, Ibet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains isalways rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and THEY don't care a centwhat a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle inyour pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do youreckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by 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 onthat wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it?--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you'd think it wasChristopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer WAShere."

  Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn't talk any morethan we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed usthe wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, andmade fast there.

  The deck was high out here. We went sne
aking down the slope of it tolabboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with ourfeet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was sodark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forwardend of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us infront of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away downthrough the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seemto hear low voices in yonder!

  Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to comealong. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but justthen 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 wantmore'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, becauseyou've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said itjest one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in thiscountry."

  By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling withcuriosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and soI won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here. So I dropped onmy hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark tillthere warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of thetexas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied handand foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dimlantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one keptpointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying:

  "I'd LIKE to! And I orter, too--a mean skunk!"

  The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't, Bill; Ihain't ever goin' to tell."

  And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say:

  "'Deed you AIN'T! You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you."And once he said: "Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best ofhim and tied him he'd a killed us both. And what FOR? Jist for noth'n.Jist because we stood on our RIGHTS--that's what for. But I lay youain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put UP thatpistol, Bill."

  Bill says:

  "I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' him--and didn't he killold Hatfield jist 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 yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard! I'll never forgit youlong's 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 nailand started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill tocome. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boatslanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from gettingrun over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. Theman came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to mystateroom, he says:

  "Here--come in here."

  And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up inthe upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, withtheir hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see them,but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. I wasglad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway,because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I didn'tbreathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN'T breathe andhear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to killTurner. He says:

  "He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares tohim NOW it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we'veserved him. Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now youhear ME. I'm for putting him out of his troubles."

  "So'm I," says Packard, very quiet.

  "Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. Well, then, that's allright. Le's go and do it."

  "Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit. You listen to me.Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's GOT to be done.But what I say is this: it ain't good sense to go court'n around after ahalter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist asgood and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. Ain't that so?"

  "You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it this time?"

  "Well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gather up whateverpickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hidethe truck. Then we'll wait. Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n twohours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See?He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his ownself. I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'munfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it ain'tgood sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?"

  "Yes, I reck'n you are. But s'pose 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 scrambledforward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarsewhisper, "Jim !" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of amoan, and I says:

  "Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's agang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and sether drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from thewreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find theirboat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em.Quick--hurry! I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard.You start at the raft, and--"

  "Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done brokeloose en gone I--en here we is!"