by Dave Mckay
“They’re -- they’re -- are you the watchman of the boat?”
“Yes,” he says, kind of proud like. “I’m the driver and the owner and the watchman and the head helper; and sometimes I’m all that I carry too. I ain’t as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can’t be so very generous and good to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and throw around money the way he does; but I’ve told him many a time that I wouldn’t want to be him; for, says I, a sailing life’s the life for me, and I’d die before I’d live two mile out of town, where there ain’t nothing ever going on, not for all his money and as much more on top of it. Says I -- “I broke in and says:
“They’re in an awful lot of trouble, and -- “
“Who is?”
“Why, pap and mom and my sister and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your boat and go up there -- “
“Up where? Where are they?”
“On the broken ship.”
“What broken ship?”
“Why, there ain’t but one.”
“What, you don’t mean the Walter Scott?”
“Yes.”
“Good land! What're they doing there, for the love of God?”
“Well, they didn’t go there a-planning to.”
“I should think they didn’t! Why, great God, there ain’t no hope for them if they don’t get off mighty soon! Why, how in the world did they ever get into such a place?”
“Easy enough. Miss Hooker was visiting up there to the town -- “
“Yes, Booth’s Landing -- go on.”
“She was a-visiting there at Booth’s Landing, and just about the time the sun was going down she started over with her servant woman in the horse ferry to stay all night at her friend’s house, Miss What-you-call-her -- can’t remember her name -- and they lost their steering oar, and the ferry turned around and went a-moving down, back first, about two mile, and hit up against the broken ship, and the man driving the ferry and the servant woman and the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she jumped onto the ship. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our flat-bottomed boat, and it was so dark we didn’t see the ship until we was right on it; and so we hit into it too. All of us was saved but Bill Whipple -- and oh, he was the best person! -- I almost wish it had been me, I do.”
“My George! It’s the strangest thing I ever heard. And then what did you all do?”
“Well, we shouted and took on, but it’s so wide there we couldn’t make nobody hear. So pap said someone got to get to land and get help. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a try for it. Miss Hooker she said if I didn’t find help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle, and he’d fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below, and been trying ever since to get people to do something, but they said, ‘What, on such a night and in such a strong river? There ain’t no point in it; go for the ferry.’ Now if you’ll go and -- “
“By Jackson, I’d like to, and I don’t know but I will; but who in the world’s a-going to pay for it? Do you think your pap -- “
“Why that’s all right. Miss Hooker she told me, very clearly, that her uncle Hornback -- “
“Great guns! is he her uncle? Look here, you head for that light over there, and turn out west when you get there, and about four hundred yards out you’ll come to a pub; tell them to take you out to Jim Hornback’s, and he’ll pay them for it. And don’t you play around any, because he’ll want to know the news. Tell him I’ll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Get moving, now; I’m a-going up around the corner here to wake up my helper.”
I started for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my boat and pulled up the side of the river in the easy water about six hundred yards, and moved myself in with some timber boats tied there; for I couldn’t rest easy until I could see the ferry boat start. But take it all around, I was feeling pretty comfortable because I had taken all this trouble for that gang, when not many would a done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these no-goods, because no-goods is the kind the widow and other good people takes the most interest in.
Well, before long here comes that broken ship, out in the dark, off the rocks moving down the river! A kind of cold shaking went through me, and then I headed out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there weren’t much hope for anyone being alive in her. I pulled all around her and shouted a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead quiet. I felt a little sad about the gang, but not much, for I thought if they could take it I could.
Then here comes the ferry boat; so I pushed out toward the middle of the river; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I put down my oars, and looked back and see the ferry go and smell around the ship looking for Miss Hooker’s body, because the owner would know her uncle Hornback would want it; and then pretty soon the ferry boat give it up and went back, and I returned to racing down the river.
It did seem a powerful long time before Jim’s light showed up; and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was starting to get a little grey in the east; so we stopped at an island, destroyed the boat, and put the raft in a good hiding place, then turned in and had a sleep like we were dead people.
Chapter 14
By and by, when we got up, we turned over the things the gang had robbed off of the ship, and found shoes, and blankets, and clothes, and a lot of books, and a telescope, and three boxes of cigars. We hadn’t ever been this rich before in either of our lives. The cigars was the best you can find anywhere. We rested up all the afternoon in the trees talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time.
I told Jim all about what happened inside the broken ship and at the ferry boat, and I said these kind of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the steering house and he went back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him any way that it could be fixed; for if he didn’t get saved he would drown; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, for sure. Well, he was right; he was most always right; he was smarter than most Blacks.
I read a lot to Jim about kings and important people in England like dukes and such, and how pretty they dressed, and how much show they put on, and called each other lords instead of Mr., and Jim’s eyes opened big to show he was interested.
He says: “I didn’t know dey was so many of dem. I ain’t heard about none of dem, but old King Solomon, without you counts dem kings dat’s in a box of cards. How much do a king get?”
“Get?” I says. “Why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; every- thing belongs to them.”
“Ain’t that nice? And what dey got to do, Huck?”
“They don’t do nothing! Why, how you talk! They just sit around.”
“No; is dat so?”
“For sure it is. They just sit around -- apart from, maybe, when there’s a war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lay around lazy; or go hunting -- just hunting and -- Shhh! -- do you hear a noise?”
We come out from behind the trees and looked; but it weren’t nothing but the sound of a river boat’s wheel turning, coming from away down around the point; so we come back.
“Yes,” says I, “and other times, when things is boring, they argue with the government; and if everybody don’t do just so, he cuts their heads off. But mostly they hang around the harem.”
“Round de which?”
“Harem.”
“What’s de harem?”
“The place where he keeps his wives. Don’t you know about the harem? Solomon had one; he had about a million wives.”
“Why, yes, dat’s so; I -- I remember it now. Most likely dey has some loud times in de room where dey keeps de babies.
“And I believe d
e wives fights a lot; and dat makes de noise worse. Yet dey say Solomon de wisest man dat ever lived. I don’t put no trust in dat, because why would a wise man want to live in de middle of such boom-banging all de time? A wise man would take and build a metal yard; and den he could shut down de metal yard when he want to rest from de noise.”
“Well, but he was the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me so, herself.”
“I don’t care what de widow say, he weren’t no wise man either. He had some of de craziest ways I ever see. Does you know about dat child dat he was gwyne to cut in two?”
“Yes, the widow told me all about it.”
“Well den! Weren’t dat de stupidest thing in de world? You just take and look at it a minute. Dere’s de tree, dere -- dat’s one of de women; here’s you -- dat’s de other one; I’s Solomon; and dis here dollar’s de child.
“Both of you wants it. What does I do? Does I ask around de neighbours and find out which of you de dollar do belong to, and hand it over to de right one, all safe and sound, de way dat anyone dat had any brains would? No; I take and axe de dollar in two, and give half of it to you, and de other half to de other woman. Dat’s de way Solomon was gwyne to do wid de child. Now I want to ask you: what’s de use of dat half a dollar? -- can’t buy nothing wid it. And what use is a half a child? I wouldn’t give a turn for a million of them.”
“But hang it, Jim, you’ve clean missed the point -- shoot, you’ve missed it a thousand miles.”
“Who? Me? Go along. Don’t talk to me about your points. I think I knows wise when I sees it; and dey ain’t no being wise in such doings as dat. De argument weren’t about a half a child, de argument was about a whole child; and de man dat think he can fix an argument about a whole child wid a half a child don’t know enough to come in out de rain. Don’t talk to me about Solomon, Huck, I knows him by de back.”
“But I tell you you don’t get the point.”
“Kill de point! Way I see it, I knows what I knows. And hear dis, de real point is down deeper. It lays in de way Solomon was brought up. You take a man dat’s got only one or two children; is dat man gwyne to be wasting children? No, he ain’t; he can’t. He knows de worth of dem. But you take a man dat’s got about five million children running around de house, and it’s different. He as soon cut a child in two as a cat. Dey’s a lot more. A child or two, more or less, weren’t no big worry to Solomon, God help him!”
I never seen such a man. If he got a thought in his head once, there weren’t no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any slave I ever seen. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon rest. I told about Louis the Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France a long time ago; and about his little boy, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in prison, and some say he died there.
“Poor little boy.”
“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”
“Dat’s good! But he’ll be pretty sad -- dey ain’t no kings here, is dey, Huck?”
“No.”
“Den he can’t get no job as a king. What's he gwyne to do?”
“Well, I don’t know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French.”
“Why, Huck, don’t de French people talk de same way we does?”
“No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said – not one word.”
“Well, now, I be hit on de head! How do dat come?”
“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their talk out of a book. What if a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy -- what would you think?”
"I wouldn’t think nothing; I’d take and hit him over de head -- dat is, if he weren’t white. I wouldn’t let no nigger call me dat.”
“Shoot! It ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”
“Well, den, why couldn’t he say it?”
“Why, he is a-saying it. That’s a French man’s way of saying it.”
“Well, it’s a fully stupid way, and I don’t want to hear no more about it. Dey ain’t no thinking in it.”
“Look here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”
“No, a cat don’t.”
“Well, does a cow?”
“No, a cow don’t, either.”
“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”
“No, dey don’t.”
“It’s good and right for them to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”
“True.”
“And ain’t it good and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?”
“Why, most surely it is.”
“Well, then, why ain’t it good and right for a French man to talk different from us? You answer me that.”
“Is a cat a man, Huck?”
“No.”
“Well, den, dey ain’t no good in a cat talking like a man. Is a cow a man? -- or is a cow a cat?”
“No, she ain’t either of them.”
“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one or the other of them. Is a French man a man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, den! Dad blame it, why don’t he talk like a man? You answer me dat!”
I see it weren’t no use wasting words -- you can’t learn a black man to argue. So I quit.
Chapter 15
We judged that three nights more would bring us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a river boat and go way up the Ohio to where slaves can be free, and then be out of trouble.
Well, the second night a fog started to come on, and we made for an island with some trees to tie to, for it wouldn’t do to try to run in a fog; but when I went ahead in the canoe, with the rope to tie up the raft, there weren’t anything but little baby trees to tie to. I passed the rope around one of them right on the border of the island, but the river was so strong that when the raft come flying by so quickly she pulled it out by the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I couldn’t move for almost half a minute it seemed to me -- and then there weren’t no raft to be seen; you couldn’t see twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run to the back of it, and picked up the oar and started to use it. But she didn’t move. I was in such a hurry I hadn’t untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so worried my hands shook so I couldn’t do much of anything with them.
As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the side of the island. That was all right as far as it went, but the island weren’t sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I found myself out in the middle of solid white fog, and hadn’t no more understanding of which way I was going than a dead man.
Thinks I, it won’t do to use the oar; I’ll run into the beach or an island or something; I got to sit here and wait, and yet it’s mighty difficult business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I shouted and listened. Away off in the distance I hears a small shout, and up comes my spirits. I went pushing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I weren’t heading for it, but heading away to the right of it.
And the next time I was heading away to the left of it -- and not getting much closer to it either, for I was flying around, this way and that, but it was going straight ahead all the time.
I wished the man would think to hit a tin pan, and do it all the time, but he never did, and it was the quiet places between the shouts that was making trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and soon I hears the shout behind me. I was mixed up good now. That was someone else’s shout, or else I was turned around.
I throwed the oar down. I heard the shout again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept answering, until by and by it was in front of me again, and I knowed I was all right if that
was Jim and not some other raft shouting. I couldn’t tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don’t look right or sound right in a fog.
The shouting went on, and in about a minute I come a-racing down on a short cliff on the side of the river with grey ghosts of big trees on it, and the movement of the river throwed me off to the left and moved me so quickly through a lot of branches that the sound of it was louder than any shout.
In another second or two it was solid white and quiet again. I sat there, listening to my heart bang inside of me, and I’d say I didn’t breathe at all while it hit against my ribs a hundred times.
I just give up then. I knowed what the problem was. That short cliff was an island, and Jim had gone down the other side of it. It weren’t no little island that you could be by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a real island; it might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide.
I kept quiet, with my ears open, about fifteen minutes, I’d say. I was moving along, maybe four or five miles an hour; but you don’t ever think of that. No, you feel like you are not moving at all on the water; and if you see a branch go by you don’t think to yourself how fast you’re going, but you stop breathing for a second and you think, my! how that branch is flying along. If you think it wouldn’t make you sad and scared out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once -- you’ll see.
