by Mark Twain
“No? What happened, then?”
The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The man tried to mumble out some words—could not succeed; tried to express something with his obstructed hands—failed; paused a moment, then feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way, toward the corpse that lay nearest him.
“Dead?” I asked. “Failed to escape? Caught in the act and shot?”
Negative shake of the head.
“How, then?”
Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely, but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more intently. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his breast with it.
“Ah—stabbed, do you mean?”
Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such devilishness that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain, and I cried:
“Did I stab him, mistaking him for you? for that stroke was meant for none but you.”
The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failing strength was able to put into its expression.
“Oh, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that stood a friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and would have saved them if he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!”
I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mocking laugh. I took my face out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board.
He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality, an astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was necessary, on account of the cold. But I did it partly because I saw that, along at first, whenever I reached for the bottle, he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud: mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave’s threshold and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonfuls of liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it—three hours and six minutes, from the time he rang his bell.
It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed since the institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian dead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless belief. Let it stand at that.
The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones. It revived and fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which, up to that night, had been steadily disappearing. That man murdered my wife and my child; and in three days hence he will have added me to his list. No matter—God! how delicious the memory of it! I caught him escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it!
After that night I was confined to my bed for a week; but as soon as I could get about I went to the dead-house books and got the number of the house which Adler had died in. A wretched lodging-house it was. It was my idea that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger’s effects, being his cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger’s watch, if I could. But while I was sick, Adler’s things had been sold and scattered, all except a few old letters, and some odds and ends of no value. However, through those letters I traced out a son of Kruger’s, the only relative he left. He is a man of thirty, now, a shoemaker by trade, and living at No. 14 Königstrasse, Mannheim—widower, with several small children. Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds of his support ever since.
Now, as to that watch—see how strangely things happen! I traced it around and about Germany for more than a year, at considerable cost in money and vexation; and at last I got it. Got it, and was unspeakably glad; opened it, and found nothing in it! Why, I might have known that that bit of paper was not going to stay there all this time. Of course I gave up that ten thousand dollars then; gave it up; and dropped it out of my mind; and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger’s son.
Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began to make ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough, from a batch of Adler’s, not previously examined with thoroughness, out dropped that long-desired scrap! I recognized it in a moment. Here it is—I will translate it:
Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of Orleans and Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth row. Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.
There—take it, and preserve it! Kruger explained that that stone was removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation, fourth row from the top, and third stone from the west. The money is secreted behind it. He said the closing sentence was a blind, to mislead in case the paper should fall into wrong hands. It probably performed that office for Adler.
Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the river, you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, care of the Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a rich man of him, and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I have done what I could for the son of the man who tried to save my wife and child—albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of my heart would have been to shield and serve him.
“Such was Ritter’s narrative,” said I to my two friends. There was a profound and impressive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then both men broke into a fusillade of excited and admiring ejaculations over the strange incidents of the tale: and this, along with a rattling fire of questions, was kept up until all hands were about out of breath. Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off, under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence and abysmal revery. For ten minutes, now, there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily:
“Ten thousand dollars!” Adding, after a considerable pause:
“Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.”
Presently the poet inquired:
“Are you going to send it to him right away?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is a queer question.”
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked hesitatingly:
“All of it? That is—I mean—”
“Certainly, all of it.”
I was going to say more, but stopped—was stopped by a train of thought which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent and I did not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers answer:
“Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient; for I don’t see that he has done anything.”
Presently the poet said:
“When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at it—five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn’t spend it in a lifetime! And it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him—you want to look at that. In a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe take to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil courses, go steadily from bad to worse—”
“Yes, that’s it,” interrupted Rogers fervently, “I’ve seen it a hundred times—yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the hands of a man like that, if you want to destroy him, that’s all. Just put money into his hands, it’s all you’ve got to do; and if it don’t pull him down, and take all the usefulness out of him, and all the self-respect and everything, then I don’t know human nature—ain’t that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give him a third of it; why, in less than six months—”
“Less that six weeks, you’d better say!” said I, warming up and breaking in. “Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he couldn’t touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than—”
“Of course he wouldn’t!” said Thompson. “I’ve edited books for that kind of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty—maybe it’s three thousand, maybe it’s two thousand—”
“What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I should like to know?” broke in Rogers earnestly. “A man perhaps perfectly contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give, enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure i
n heart, and blest!—yes, I say blest! above all the myriads that go in silk attire and walk the empty, artificial round of social folly—but just you put that temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before a man like that, and say—”
“Fifteen hundred devils!” cried I. “Five hundred would rot his principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rum-shop, thence to the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to—”
“Why put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?” interrupted the poet earnestly and appealingly. “He is happy where he is, and as he is. Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.”
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker something. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point, and we finally decided to send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that these two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might consider themselves lucky. Rogers said:
“Who would have had any luck if it hadn’t been for me? I flung out the first hint—but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.”
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very moment that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough, and without anybody’s help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man got pretty badly battered. As soon as I got myself mended up after a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane-deck in a pretty sour humor. I found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would permit:
“I have come to say good-by, captain. I wish to go ashore at Napoleon.”
“Go ashore where?”
“Napoleon.”
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood, stopped that and said:
“But are you serious?”
“Serious? I certainly am.”
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said:
“He wants to get off at Napoleon!”
“Napoleon?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Great Cæsar’s ghost!”
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said:
“Uncle, here’s a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!”
“Well, by—!”
I said:
“Come, what is all this about? Can’t a man go ashore at Napoleon, if he wants to?”
“Why, hang it, don’t you know? There isn’t any Napoleon any more. Hasn’t been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it, tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!”
“Carried the whole town away? Banks, churches, jails, newspaper offices, court-house, theater, fire department, livery stable—everything?”
“Everything! Just a fifteen-minute job, or such a matter. Didn’t leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the fag-end of a shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now where the dead-center of that town used to be; yonder is the brick chimney—all that’s left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you—up-stream—now you begin to recognize this country, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful—and unexpected.”
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain’s news. Thompson put a half-dollar in my hand and said softly:
“For my share of the chromo.”
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town with a big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights—an inquest every day; town where I had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished, in the whole Mississippi valley; town where we were handed the first printed news of the Pennsylvania’s mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more—swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!
From LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI, 1883
THE PROFESSOR’S YARN
IT WAS in the early days. I was not a college professor then. I was a humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me—to survey, in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey a route for a great mining ditch in California, and I was on my way thither, by sea—a three or four weeks’ voyage. There were a good many passengers, but I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions, and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites. There were three professional gamblers on board—rough, repulsive fellows. I never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every day and night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them through their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco-smoke and profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up with it, of course.
There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal, for he seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have gotten rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engaging in his countrified simplicity and his beaming good nature. The first time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some Western state—doubtless Ohio—and afterward, when he dropped into his personal history, and I discovered that he was a cattle-raiser from interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed toward him for verifying my instinct.
He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast, to help me make my promenade; and so, in the course of time, his easy-working jaw had told me everything about his business, his prospects, his family, his relatives, his politics—in fact, everything that concerned Backus, living or dead. And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects, and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing showed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters. I said something about triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his ear; he inquired what it meant; I explained. After that he quietly and inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me Triangle.
What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a bull or a cow, his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As long as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed them all with his affectionate tongue. I tramped along in voiceless misery while the cattle question was up. When I could endure it no longer, I used to deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversation; then my eye fired and his faded; my tongue fluttered, his stopped; life was a joy to me, and a sadness to him.
One day he said, a little hestiatingly, and with somewhat of diffidence:
“Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom a minute and have a little talk on a certain matter?”
I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his head out, glanced up and down the saloon warily, then c
losed the door and locked it. We sat down on the sofa and he said:
“I’m a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it strikes you favorable, it’ll be a middling good thing for both of us. You ain’t a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther am I—it’s business, ain’t that so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so can I you, if we see fit. I’ve raked and scraped and saved a considerable many years, and I’ve got it all here.” He unlocked an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of shabby clothes aside, and drew a short, stout bag into view for a moment, then buried it again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a cautious, low tone, he continued: “She’s all there—a round ten thousand dollars in yellow-boys; now, this is my little idea: What I don’t know about raising cattle ain’t worth knowing. There’s mints of money in it in Californy. Well, I know, and you know, that all along a line that’s being surveyed, there’s little dabs of land that they call ‘gores,’ that fall to the survey free gratis for nothing. All you’ve got to do on your side is to survey in such a way that the ‘gores’ will fall on good fat land, then you turn ’em over to me, I stock ’em with cattle, in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the dollars regular right along, and—”
I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could not be helped. I interrupted and said severely:
“I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject, Mr. Backus.”
It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and shame-faced apologies. I was as much distressed as he was—especially as he seemed so far from having suspected that there was anything improper in his proposition. So I hastened to console him and lead him on to forget his mishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery. We were lying at Acapulco, and as we went on deck it happened luckily that the crew were just beginning to hoist some beeves aboard in slings. Backus’s melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the memory of his late mistake.
“Now, only look at that!” cried he. “My goodness, Triangle, what would they say to it in Ohio? Wouldn’t their eyes bug out to see ’em handled like that?—wouldn’t they, though?”
