Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled about the way he was treated, and couldn’t seem to git over it, and especially people’s saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and at their saying she warn’t simple and would be always getting out of order. Get out of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn’t any more get out of order than the solar sister.
He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn’t ever have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on!
He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.
We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn’t say much—only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track.
Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell, too—about a two-o’clock feel, as near as I could make out—Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be asleep, and we’d better—
“Better what?” I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I knowed what he was thinking about.
“Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship,” he says.
I says: “No, sir! Don’ you budge, Tom Sawyer.”
And Jim—well, Jim was kind o’ gasping, he was so scared. He says:
“Oh, Mars Tom, DON’T! Ef you teches him, we’s gone—we’s gone sho’! I ain’t gwine anear him, not for nothin’ in dis worl’. Mars Tom, he’s plumb crazy.”
Tom whispers and says—"That’s WHY we’ve got to do something. If he wasn’t crazy I wouldn’t give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn’t hire me to get out—now that I’ve got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground—if he was in his right mind. But it’s no good politics, sailing around like this with a person that’s out of his head, and says he’s going round the world and then drown us all. We’ve GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it before he wakes up, too, or we mayn’t ever get another chance. Come!”
But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we wouldn’t budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn’t get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and begged him not to, but it warn’t no use; so he got down on his hands and knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the professor’s head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward the professor’s feet where the steering-buttons was. Well, he got there all safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an’ soft in the bottom, and lay still. The professor stirred, and says, “What’s that?” But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter and mumble and nestle, like a person that’s going to wake up, and I thought I was going to die, I was so worried and scared.
Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I ‘most cried, I was so glad. She buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn’t see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We was afraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and no help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down ‘mongst my other works, because I couldn’t tell in the dark but it might be the professor! which I thought it WAS.
Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You can’t land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on raining, for I didn’t want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so awful uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the rest of the night, which wasn’t long, though it did seem so; and at daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a-blazing up gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all asleep.
CHAPTER III. TOM EXPLAINS
WE went to sleep about four o’clock, and woke up about eight. The professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.
There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says:
“Tom, didn’t we start east?”
“Yes.”
“How fast have we been going?”
“Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round. Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find it.”
“Well, then, it’s just as I reckoned. The professor lied.”
“Why?”
“Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn’t we?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, we ain’t.”
“What’s the reason we ain’t?”
“I know by the color. We’re right over Illinois yet. And you can see for yourself that Indiana ain’t in sight.”
“I wonder what’s the matter with you, Huck. You know by the COLOR?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“What’s the color got to do with it?”
“It’s got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana is pink. You show me any pink down here, if you can. No, sir; it’s green.”
“Indiana PINK? Why, what a lie!”
“It ain’t no lie; I’ve seen it on the map, and it’s pink.”
You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. He says:
“Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck Finn, I would jump over. Seen it on the map! Huck Finn, did you reckon the States was the same color out-of-doors as they are on the map?”
“Tom Sawyer, what’s a map for? Ain’t it to learn you facts?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, how’s it going to do that if it tells lies? That’s what I want to know.”
“Shucks, you muggins! It don’t tell lies.”
“It don’t, don’t it?”
“No, it don’t.”
“All right, then; if it don’t, there ain’t no two States the same color. You git around THAT if you can, Tom Sawyer.”
He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell you, I felt pretty good, for Tom
Sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his leg and says:
“I tell YOU! dat’s smart, dat’s right down smart. Ain’t no use, Mars Tom; he got you DIS time, sho’!” He slapped his leg again, and says, “My LAN’, but it was smart one!”
I never felt so good in my life; and yet I didn’t know I was saying anything much till it was out. I was just mooning along, perfectly careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never THINKING of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. Why, it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites into a di’mond. Now all that HE knows first off is that it’s some kind of gravel he’s bit into; but he don’t find out it’s a di’mond till he gits it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and has a look at it, and then he’s surprised and glad—yes, and proud too; though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain’t entitled to as much credit as he would ‘a’ been if he’d been HUNTING di’monds. You can see the difference easy if you think it over. You see, an accident, that way, ain’t fairly as big a thing as a thing that’s done a-purpose. Anybody could find that di’mond in that corn-pone; but mind you, it’s got to be somebody that’s got THAT KIND OF A CORN-PONE. That’s where that feller’s credit comes in, you see; and that’s where mine comes in. I don’t claim no great things—I don’t reckon I could ‘a’ done it again—but I done it that time; that’s all I claim. And I hadn’t no more idea I could do such a thing, and warn’t any more thinking about it or trying to, than you be this minute. Why, I was just as ca’m, a body couldn’t be any ca’mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. I’ve often thought of that time, and I can remember just the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. I can see it all: beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us, here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his little table, and Tom’s cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry. And one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. And we left the bird and the train both behind, ‘WAY behind, and done it easy, too.
But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant blatherskites, and then he says:
“Suppose there’s a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has got to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you look at them, hain’t he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don’t. He paints one of them blue, and then you can’t make no mistake. It’s just the same with the maps. That’s why they make every State a different color; it ain’t to deceive you, it’s to keep you from deceiving yourself.”
But I couldn’t see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim shook his head, and says:
“Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you’d wait a long time before you’d fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac’. I’s gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you’self. I see one of ‘em a-paintin’ away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson’s back lot, en I went down to see, en he was paintin’ dat old brindle cow wid de near horn gone—you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he’s paintin’ her for, en he say when he git her painted, de picture’s wuth a hundred dollars. Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah, if you’ll b’lieve me, he jes’ shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on a-dobbin’. Bless you, Mars Tom, DEY don’t know nothin’.”
Tom lost his temper. I notice a person ‘most always does that’s got laid out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we’d feel better. Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip again, and says:
“That’s funny! That clock’s near about an hour fast.”
So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and it was an hour fast too. That puzzled him.
“That’s a mighty curious thing,” he says. “I don’t understand it.”
Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was an hour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kinder gaspy like, and he says:
“Ger-reat Scott, it’s the LONGITUDE!”
I says, considerably scared:
“Well, what’s been and gone and happened now?”
“Why, the thing that’s happened is that this old bladder has slid over Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of Pennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there.”
“Tom Sawyer, you don’t mean it!”
“Yes, I do, and it’s dead sure. We’ve covered about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. We’ve come close on to eight hundred miles.”
I didn’t believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back just the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn’t take much short of two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his mind and studying. Pretty soon he says:
“Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?”
“Yes, they’re right.”
“Ain’t yo’ watch right, too?”
“She’s right for St. Louis, but she’s an hour wrong for here.”
“Mars Tom, is you tryin’ to let on dat de time ain’t de SAME everywheres?”
“No, it ain’t the same everywheres, by a long shot.”
Jim looked distressed, and says:
“It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I’s right down ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you’s been raised. Yassir, it’d break yo’ Aunt Polly’s heart to hear you.”
Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn’t say nothing, and Jim went on:
“Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it. Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain’ dey bofe his children? ‘Cose dey is. WELL, den! is he gwine to SCRIMINATE ‘twixt ‘em?”
“Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain’t no discriminating about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?”
Jim see the p’int. He was stuck. He couldn’t answer. Tom says:
“He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case HERE ain’t no discrimination of his, it’s man’s. The Lord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn’t invent the hours, and he didn’t distribute them around. Man did that.”
“Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?”
“Certainly.”
“Who tole him he could?”
“Nobody. He never asked.”
Jim studied a minute, and says:
“Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn’t ‘a’ tuck no sich resk. But some people ain’t scared o’ nothin’. Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don’t care what happens. So den dey’s allays an hour’s diff’unce everywhah, Mars Tom?”
“An hour? No! It’s four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of ‘em’s an hour, thirty of ‘em’s two hours, and so on. When it’s one clock Tuesday morning in England, it’s eight o’clock the night before in New York.”
Jim moved a
little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the worst of his feelings, and then he says:
“Mars Tom talkin’ sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Monday in t’other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain’t no place to joke—up here whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two days inter one day? Can’t git two hours inter one hour, kin you? Can’t git two niggers inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can’t git two gallons of whisky inter a one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, ‘twould strain de jug. Yes, en even den you couldn’t, I don’t believe. Why, looky here, Huck, s’posen de Choosday was New Year’s—now den! is you gwine to tell me it’s dis year in one place en las’ year in t’other, bofe in de identical same minute? It’s de beatenest rubbage! I can’t stan’ it—I can’t stan’ to hear tell ‘bout it.” Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says:
“NOW what’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”
Jim could hardly speak, but he says:
“Mars Tom, you ain’t jokin’, en it’s SO?”
“No, I’m not, and it is so.”
Jim shivered again, and says:
“Den dat Monday could be de las’ day, en dey wouldn’t be no las’ day in England, en de dead wouldn’t be called. We mustn’t go over dah, Mars Tom. Please git him to turn back; I wants to be whah—”
All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. Tom says:
“Ain’t that the—” He catched his breath, then says: “It IS, sure as you live! It’s the ocean!”
The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels Page 562
