by Mark Twain
Now that this part of the escape plan was coming along, Tom decided he had to finish up the mournful, tragic part of the plan, and that was to create a sad inscription that Jim would have to write on the inside of the walls. He said Jim had to leave one, because they all left one. He made up a few of them, wrote them down on a paper, and read them off, so:
1. Here a captive heart busted.
2. Here a poor prisoner, forsaken by the world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life.
3. Here, homeless and friendless, perished a noble stranger, natural son of Louis XIV.
Tom’s voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. He was not partial to any of my suggestions, mainly that it would take months for Jim to carve any of these messages into the wall, and that he warn’t lettered in any case. Tom said he would block out the letters for Jim, but I still thought it was going to be a waste of time. Then he came up with yet another idea, and that was to take an old nail and write the inscription on an old shirt, but Jim said there warn’t any ink in there; Tom thinked a bit and said Jim could conjure up a decent substitute using rusty water, tears, and a little of his own blood, and Jim reckoned he would never see his loved ones again. I begun to think that, too. After more than a week of this, Tom and I got to arguing by the hole next to Jim’s hut, and Jim raised up from his bed, slid he chain off the bed-leg, and crawled through the hole to plead with Tom himself.
“Please, Mars Tom – you got to deliver me! I can’t stan’ it there, jes waitin’. I’m beginning to lose all hope, cain’t you see? We needs to get out ‘a’ here, and not in no fo’ or fi’ months, but now!”
Tom didn’t see it that way. A plan was a plan, and things had to be done right, or not at all; and this was when he told us about the last and the most special part of his plan, which was for Jim to have some kind of wild animal or snake for a pet, cause that was how it was done in all the books. A spider would work, or a rattlesnake, or even a small rat if they could catch one. A bunch of rats would be even better. Jim started weeping, and Tom said:
“Jim, stop being so obstinate. A prisoner’s got to have some sort of a dumb pet, and if a rattlesnake hain’t up your alley, we’ll fetch a rat: just a small one, or two, so you can tame it and teach it a few tricks.”
“Why, Mars Tom, I doan’ want no such snake – or rat. No sah, I doan’ want no such doings; I just want me out!”
“You’ll have to play music to them. You got anything in there to play music on?”
I was considerable frustrated by now, as I could see Tom’s plan was going to stretch out into the years to come, but Jim said:
“I ain’t got nuffin but a coarse comb and a piece of paper, an’ an old juice-harp. I doan’ reckon no animal’s goin’ to be spell-boun’ by me goin’ along on a juice-harp.”
“Yes they would,” Tom answered. “They don’t care what kind of music ‘tis. A jews-harp would be plenty good for a rat. All animals love music – in a prison they dote on it. Specially painful music; and you can’t get no other kind out of a jews-harp. It always interests them; they come out of the walls to see what’s the matter with you. You want to set on your bed right before you go to sleep, and early in the morning, and play your jews-harp; play some old hymn you remember from when you was a kid, from before all the Zum business. That’s the kind that’ll scoop a rat quicker’n anything else. And after you’ve played for about two minutes you’ll see all the rats, and the snakes, and spiders and things begin to come out of the wall all worried about you. They’ll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good time.”
By and by, Jim doesn’t say another word, but crawls back into his hut and puts the chain back on the bedstead. I think all the hope in his body had finally seeped out and died. Tom said he most lost all patience with Jim; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier choices than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and they was purely wasted on Jim. So Jim stirred on his bed, and said he was sorry in a low voice, and that he wouldn’t behave so anymore, but I was beginning to not like Tom’s plan at all; no parts of it; and not one bit. Jim was a miserable wreck, and Tom didn’t see it or just didn’t care. He just liked his plan, and didn’t see what it was doing. I knowed – I’ve always knowed – that I ain’t no Tom Sawyer, and I always looked up to Tom because he was cleverer and smarter than any boy alive, including me. But now it didn’t seem so any more.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Nonnamous Letters and Rescue
Well, by the end of more than three weeks, everything was in pretty good shape. Jim got to work on his jews-harp, and we filled his little room as best we could with a splendid stock of spiders, toads, frogs, and caterpillars. We got them mixed in with a number of rats we caught in a rat-trap we bought in town, and you’d never hear a cabin so blithesome as Jim’s when he’d play his music and they’d all swarm out and go for him. Tom finally got his hands on an old shirt, and he sent it in for Jim to keep a journal, and every time a rat bit him, he would get up and scribble some entry whilst the ink was still fresh. The inscriptions was cut onto the inside hut wall, and the bed-leg was sawed in two. Tom reckoned we had to eat up all the sawdust so as to not leave any clues, and it gave us all the most amazing stomach-ache. We just knew we was all going to die, but we didn’t. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever seen; and Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done at last; and we was pretty soundly fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway slave, but didn’t get no answer, because there warn’t no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St.Louis and the New Orleans newspapers, and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones it gave me the fantods, and I see there warn’t no more time to lose. So Tom says, now is the time for the nonnamous letters.
“What’s that?” I says.
He taps his noggin like there are a hundred more such plans a-busting to come out, and says:
“Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one way, sometimes another. But there’s always someone that the prisoner and the accomplices don’t see nor suspect that give notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI was going to light out of the Tooleries, a servant-girl done it.”
“But looky here, Tom, what do you want to warn anybody that something’s up? Let them find it out for themselves – it’s their business, not our’n.”
“Yes, I know, but you can’t always depend on them. It’s the way they’ve been from the very start – left us to do everything. So if we don’t give them notice, there won’t be nobody to interfere with us, so after all our hard work and trouble the escape will go off perfectly dull and flat and won’t amount to nothing.”
“Well, as for me, that’s the way I’d like it: dull and flat and everybody sleeping through the whole thing.”
“Shucks!” he says, and looks disgusted with my casual attitude. So I says:
“But if this is something that has to be done, I ain’t going to make further complaint.”
“Good. Cause you got one more job ahead of you. It’s usual for a servant-girl to deliver the nonnamous letter. You’ll do for this. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that one girl’s frock. You’ll only have to wear it for fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door. Then you can high-tail it and put it back before she even wakes up.”
“All right, all right – jings! I don’t particularly like it, but I’ll do it; I could carry it just as handy in my own togs.”
“You wouldn’t look much like a servant-girl then, would you?”
“No, but there wouldn’t be nobody to see what I look like, anyway.”
“That ain’t got a thing to do with it. The point is that we got to do our duty, until the mission is accomplished, and not worry about whether anybody sees us or not. Hain’t you got any principle at all?”
“All right,
I ain’t saying nothing; I’m the servant girl for fifteen minutes.”
“Good. And when the letter is delivered, you can change back to your regular clothes and we’ll all set out and evade together. When a prisoner of style escapes it’s called an evasion. It’s always called so.”
So Tom wrote the nonnamous letters, I smouched the frock and shoved the letter under the front door just like Tom told me to. The letter was short, and read:
Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp look-out.
Unknown Friend
The very next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in Jim’s blood, of a skull and crossbones on the front door; and two nights later another one of a man in a coffin, his eyes wide open and with sharp, bloody teeth, on the back door. They couldn’t ‘a’ been worse scared if the house was filled with snakes and ghosts and Zum skritching on the doors and windows. Aunt Sally she jumped and yowled if anything fell or if a door slammed. She jumped and yelped if you was to come up behind her and touch her on the shoulder. She couldn’t face no way and be satisfied, because she allowed there was always something behind her – and so she was constant a-whirling around and yelping, and then she’d writhe around and yelp again. She was afraid to go to be bed, and afraid not to go to bed because she feared being sleepy and off her game the following day. So the thing was working very well, Tom thought.
Now, Tom says to me, all puffed up and excited, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we get another letter ready, and we was wondering where to put it, as Uncle Silas had posted sentries at both the front and the back doors. Tom clumb out the window to spy around, and the man at the back door was asleep, so he took the letter and stuck it in his front shirt pocket and come back. This letter read:
Don’t betray me. I am only doing what I think is right. There is a desperate gang of individuals I take to be of the newer form of Zum, and they are hell-bent on raising a gang of the dead out of other people’s slaves and servants, as their feeling is they won’t be missed as much. They are planning on stealing yours – including the runaway you have hidden on your property. They have been trying to scare you out of your house over the last few days so you will not slow them down. One of the ringleaders is my now deceased husband, who will one day have to answer for his hellish activities. They will sneak down from the North, and midnight exact, and whilst they are there, please kill them and take their heads off at your leasure. I do not wish any reward but just to do the right thing.
Unknown Friend
After the sun came up, we was feeling pretty good, and went over to the river and spent some time a-fishing, and took a final survey of the raft and found her to be all right. We got home late for dinner, and found Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally in such a sweat they didn’t know which end they was standing on, and made us go right to bed as soon as we was done supper. They wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the letter, but didn’t need to, because we knowed more about it than anyone else. But by and by there was a growing commotion on the first floor, and Tom and I went out the window to the ground to peer into inside. We must’ve made some sort of little noise, because Aunt Sally come out on the porch with four or five grim-looking men who was armed and says:
“What are you two doin’ out there?”
“Noth’n.”
“Noth’n!”
“No’m.”
“Well then, what possessed you two to sneak out of your room this time of night?”
“I don’t know ‘m.”
“You don’t know? Don’t answer me that way, Tom. I want to know what you and Huck are doin’ out there.”
Tom says:
“We ain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally. I hope to gracious if we was.”
I reckoned she’d let us go now, and as a general thing she would, but I believe there was too many things going on and she was in a sweat about every single one of them; so she says, very decided:
“You just march yourselves into that sitting-room and stay there till I come. I lay I’ll find out what it is before I’m done with you.”
So we followed her back inside and walked into the sitting room. Oh my, what a crowd was gathered there! Fifteen to twenty farmers, and every one of them had a gun, and a third of them had swords strapped around their waist. I felt most powerful sick, but I slunk to a chair and plopped down.
They was all sitting around, some of the men talking in a low voice, and stabbing here and there at a map on the table with their fingers. They was all fidgety and uneasy, but trying to let on like they warn’t. I wished Aunt Sally would come in and get done with us, even if it meant taking a licking, so we could stop fooling around and clear out with Jim before these rips lost their patience and came after us.
Soon I didn’t know which end of me was up neither; because these men was in such a fidget that some was wanting to start right now and lay for the desperados, saying it warn’t but a few minutes to midnight, and others trying to put together elaborate plans where one group would go one way and the other would go another, saying they’d get them all up in some kind of murderous crossfire. I was a-shaking all over and wanting to slink to the floor when Sally finally takes a look at me and says:
“Dear me, you two boys have no business here, being mixed up with what is to come. I don’t care what you done, boys. Now clear off to bed and don’t let me see no more of you till morning.”
We was up the stairs in a second, and scrambled back out the window in the next, shinning through the darkness for the hut. I couldn’t hardly speak, I was so anxious, but Tom’s eyes just blazed, and he says:
“Ain’t it bully, Huck! What a stir we made! Why, if we had it to do over again, I bet we could fetch over two hundred!”
“Hurry, Tom! Hurry!” I says.
Next thing you know, we’re at the door to the hut, and Jim is already waiting for us outside. He had followed Tom’s plans the best he could, but as it grew dark, I guess he decided to take off a few of the rough edges; which was a lucky thing, considering there was a bunch of men only a few minutes behind us in the dark. We went all the way to the outer fence in injun style, one behind another, not making the least noise, and we dropped down in a shallow ditch when we started hearing the tramps of the men. They must have broken up into several groups, because they seemed to be coming from everywhere: out of the woods, on the path from the main house, and in the work fields on the other side of the fence. They warn’t trying to keep quiet, neither, but were shouting to each other and yipping like they was moving cattle before them. Then there was a few rifleshots from the fields, and sure enough, one group found a lone Zum out wandering amongst the cotton and figured they was close to a regular gold mine of Zum. All the other groups moved toward the gunshot, and when the men in our area went past us, we sprung out of the ditch like rabbits and made for the river. As we was moving, Tom trod on a dry twig, and it made a loud snap. Then one of the lagging men sings out:
“Who’s there? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”
But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved as hard as we could. Then all around us, there was a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us. We heard another one of them sing out:
“Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! After ‘em, boys, and turn loose the dogs!”
So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them coming because they were booted and yelled, and we didn’t wear no boots and didn’t yell. When they got pretty close to us, we dodged into the bush and let them rush by, then dropped in behind them. By this time, somebody let the dogs loose, and here they come, moaning and baying like they was fresh on the scent and ready for blood; but they was all our dogs and we was already friendly with them, so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when the seen it warn’t nobody but us, they only sniffed a bit and said a quick howdy and tore right ahead toward the shouting and clattering; then we poured it on again, and struck through the bush to where th
e canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life toward the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we could. Then we struck out for the island where the raft was hid; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, and occasional there was a number of gunshots, so I guessed they had stumbled across at least one or two more Zum. When we finally stepped on the raft, I says:
“Now, old Jim, you’re a free man, and you won’t ever have to be a slave, nor owned no more.”
We was all as glad as we could be, till we noticed Tom’s pants was all covered in blood. He had taken a bullet to his leg, and the blood was pumping out nicely. He was of the opinion that we should tend to it ourselves whilst the raft continued on down the river, and in a few days, by the time we struck Orleans, he’d be his old self again. But Jim and I consulted each other, and noted the kind of blood that Tom had lost, and figured neither of us wanted to be responsible for cutting Tom Sawyer’s head off, if it came to that. I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor, and he raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn’t budge. He started cussing at us and calling us names and giving us a piece of his mind, but it didn’t do no good. Jim said:
“No sah, Tom – we doan’ budge a step out’n this place without a doctor – not if it’s another forty year!”
I reckoned Jim was more like me than Tom ever was, and if this was some kind of failing, it was a failing I was comfortable with. So I said I would fetch a doctor, and Jim was to hide in the woods until he saw the doctor was gone again. Tom would’ve like to make up a grand plan to find and kidnap this doctor, and blindfold him before bringing him, but I was in the canoe and paddling toward shore, in no more need of listening to any more grand plans.
