Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

They were fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my goodness, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see any joke in it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king somewhat to see one. I reckoned they would turn pale. But no, not a bit of pale did they turn. The duke never let on that he suspected what was up, but just went goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug gurgling out buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowfully on those newcomers, as if it gave him a stomachache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he did it admirably. Lots of the principal people gathered around the king, to let him see they were on his side. That old gentleman who had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he began to speak, and I saw right away that he spoke like an Englishman—not the king’s way, though the king’s was pretty good for an imitation. I can’t give the old gentleman’s words, nor can I imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd and said, about like this:

“This is a surprise to me that I wasn’t looking for; and I will acknowledge, candidly and frankly, that I am not very well prepared to meet it and answer it; for my brother and I have had misfortunes. He has broken his arm, and our baggage was put off at a town above here last night, in the night, by mistake. I am Peter Wilks’ brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, who can neither hear nor speak—and he cannot even make signs that amount to much, now that he has only one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. But until then I won’t say anything more, but will go to the hotel and wait.”

So he and the new deaf man started off; and the king laughed and babbled out:

“Broke his arm—very likely, isn’t it?—and very convenient, too, for a fraud who has to make signs and hasn’t learned how. Lost their baggage! That’s mighty good!—and mighty ingenious—under the circumstances!”

So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpetbag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet stuff, who had just come off the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing toward the king now and then and nodding their heads—it was Levi Bell, the lawyer who had gone up to Louisville; and another one was a big, rough husky who had come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king was done, this husky up and said:

“Say, look here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when did you come to this town?”

“The day before the funeral, friend,” said the king.

“But what time of day?”

“In the evening—about an hour or two before sundown.”

“How did you come?”

“I came down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati.”

“Well, then, how did you come to be up at the Point in the morning—in a canoe?”

“I wasn’t up at the Point in the morning.”

“It’s a lie.”

Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher.

“Preacher be hanged, he’s a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Point that morning. I live up there, don’t I? Well, I was up there, and he was up there. I saw him there. He came in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and a boy.”

The doctor up and said:

“Would you know the boy again if you were to see him, Hines?”

“I reckon I would, but I don’t know. Why, he’s over there, now. I know him perfectly easily.”

It was me he pointed at. The doctor said:

“Neighbors, I don’t know whether the new couple are frauds or not; but if these two aren’t frauds, I am a fool, that’s all. I think it’s our duty to see that they don’t get away from here until we’ve looked into this thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We’ll take these fellows to the tavern and confront them with the other couple, and I reckon we’ll find out something before we get through.”

It was a treat for the crowd, though maybe not for the king’s friends; so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor led me along by the hand, and was kind enough, but he never let go of my hand.

We all got into a big room in the hotel, and lit some candles, and fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor said:

“I don’t wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they’re frauds, and they may have accomplices that we don’t know anything about. If they have, won’t the accomplices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks left? It isn’t unlikely. If these men aren’t frauds, they won’t object to sending for that money and letting us keep it until they prove they’re all right—isn’t that so?”

Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the outset. But the king only looked sorrowful, and said:

“Gentlemen, I wish the money were there, for I have no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation of this miserable business; but, alas, the money isn’t there; you can send and see, if you want to.”

“Where is it, then?”

“Well, when my niece gave it to me to keep for her, I took it and hid it inside the straw tick of my bed, not wishing to bank it for the few days we would be here, and considering the bed a safe place, we not being used to enslaved people, and supposing them honest, like servants in England. The enslaved people stole it the very next morning after I had gone downstairs; and when I sold them I hadn’t missed the money yet, so they got clean away with it. My servant here can tell you about it, gentlemen.”

The doctor and several others said “Shucks!” and I saw that nobody altogether believed him. One man asked me if I had seen the enslaved people steal it. I said no, but I saw them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought anything of it, only I reckoned they were afraid they had woken up my master and were trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirled on me and said:

“Are you English, too?”

I said yes; and he and some others laughed, and said, “Nonsense!”

Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody ever said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it—and so they kept it up, and kept it up; and it was the worst mixed-up thing you ever saw. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his; and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would have seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and the other was spinning lies. And by and by they had me up to tell what I knew. The king gave me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knew enough to talk on the right side. I began to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn’t get very far before the doctor began to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, said:

“Sit down, my boy; I wouldn’t strain myself if I were you. I reckon you aren’t used to lying; it doesn’t seem to come easily; what you want is practice. You do it pretty awkwardly.”

I didn’t care anything for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, anyway.

The doctor started to say something, and turned and said:

“If you’d been in town at first, Levi Bell—” The king broke in and reached out his hand, and said:

“Why, is this my poor dead brother’s old friend that he has written so often about?”

The lawyer and he shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked low; and at last the lawyer spoke up and said:

“That’ll fix it. I’ll take the order and send it, along with your brother’s, and then they’ll know it’s all right.”

So they got some paper and a pen, and the king sat down and twisted his head to one side, and chewed his tongue, and scrawled off something; and then they gave the pen to the duke—and then for the first time the duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer turned to the new old gentleman and said:

“You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names.”

The old gentleman wrote, but nobody could read it. The lawyer looked mighty astonished, and said:

“Well, it beats me”—and he snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man’s writing, and then them again; and then said: “These old letters are from Harvey Wilks; and here are these two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn’t write them” (the king and the duke looked tricked and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had taken them in), “and here is this old gentleman’s handwriting, and anybody can tell, easily enough, that he didn’t write them—the fact is, the scratches he makes aren’t properly writing at all. Now, here are some letters from—”

The new old gentleman said:

“If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother there—so he copies for me. It’s his hand you have there, not mine.”

“Well!” said the lawyer, “this is a state of things. I have some of William’s letters, too; so if you’ll get him to write a line or so, we can com—”

“He can’t write with his left hand,” said the old gentleman. “If he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine too. Look at both, please—they’re by the same hand.”

The lawyer did it, and said:

“I believe it’s so—and if it isn’t so, there’s a good deal stronger resemblance than I had noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well! I thought we were right on the track of a solution, but it’s gone to pieces, partly. But anyway, one thing is proved—neither of these two is a Wilks”—and he wagged his head toward the king and the duke.

Well, what do you think? That mule-headed old fool wouldn’t give in then! Indeed he wouldn’t. He said it wasn’t a fair test. He said his brother William was the darnedest joker in the world, and hadn’t tried to write—he saw William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling and warbling right along until he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself; but pretty soon the new gentleman broke in, and said:

“I’ve thought of something. Is there anybody here who helped to lay out my br—helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?”

“Yes,” said somebody, “Ab Turner and I did it. We’re both here.”

Then the old man turned toward the king, and said:

“Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?”

Blamed if the king didn’t have to brace up mighty quick, or he would have squashed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under—it took him so suddenly; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make almost anybody squash, to be dealt such a solid one as that without any notice, because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man? He whitened a little; he couldn’t help it; and it was mighty still in there, and everybody was bending a little forward and gazing at him. I said to myself, now he’ll throw in the sponge—there’s no more use. Well, did he? A body can hardly believe it, but he didn’t. I reckon he thought he would keep the thing up until he tired those people out, so they would thin out, and he and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, he sat there, and pretty soon he began to smile, and said:

“Mf! It’s a very tough question, isn’t it! Yes, sir, I can tell you what’s tattooed on his breast. It’s just a small, thin, blue arrow—that’s what it is; and if you don’t look closely, you can’t see it. Now what do you say—hey?”

Well, I never saw anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out cheek.

The new old gentleman turned briskly toward Ab Turner and his partner, and his eye lit up as if he judged he had gotten the king this time, and said:

“There—you’ve heard what he said! Was there any such mark on Peter Wilks’ breast?”

Both of them spoke up and said:

“We didn’t see any such mark.”

“Good!” said the old gentleman. “Now, what you did see on his breast was a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was young), and a W, with dashes between them, so: P—B—W”—and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. “Come, isn’t that what you saw?”

Both of them spoke up again, and said:

“No, we didn’t. We never saw any marks at all.”

Well, everybody was in a state of mind now, and they sang out:

“The whole lot of them are frauds! Let’s duck them! Let’s drown them! Let’s ride them on a rail!” and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling powwow. But the lawyer jumped on the table and yelled, and said:

“Gentlemen—gentlemen! Hear me just a word—just a single word—if you PLEASE! There’s one way yet—let’s go and dig up the corpse and look.”

That took them.

“Hooray!” they all shouted, and were starting right off; but the lawyer and the doctor sang out:

“Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch them along, too!”

“We’ll do it!” they all shouted; “and if we don’t find those marks we’ll lynch the whole gang!”

I was scared, now, I tell you. But there was no getting away, you know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the evening.

As we went by our house I wished I hadn’t sent Mary Jane out of town; because now if I could tip her the wink she’d light out and save me, and blow on our deadbeats.

Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darkening up, and the lightning was beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver among the leaves. This was the most awful and the most dangerous trouble I was ever in; and I was kind of stunned; everything was going so differently from what I had allowed for; instead of being fixed so I could take my own time if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close fit came, here was nothing in the world between me and sudden death but just those tattoo marks. If they didn’t find them—

I couldn’t bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn’t think about anything else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist—Hines—and a body might as well try to give Goliath the slip. He dragged me right along—he was so excited—and I had to run to keep up.

When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody had thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, half a mile off, to borrow one.

So they dug and dug like everything; and it got awfully dark, and the rain started, and the wind swished and swooshed along, and the lightning came brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but those people never took any notice of it—they were so full of this business; and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out, and you couldn’t see anything at all.

At last they got out the coffin and began to unscrew the lid, and then there was such crowding and shouldering and shoving, to squeeze in and get a sight, as you never saw; and in the dark, that way, it was awful. Hines hurt my wrist dreadfully, pulling and tugging so, and I reckon he clean forgot I was in the world—he was so excited and panting.

All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and somebody sang out:

“By the living jingo, here’s the bag of gold on his breast!”

Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and gave a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and nobody can describe the way I lit out and shinned for the road in the dark.

I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew—at least, I had it all to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!

When I struck the town I saw there wasn’t anybody out in the storm, so I never hunted for any back streets, but humped it straight through the main one; and when I began to get toward our house I aimed my eye and set it. No light there; the house all dark—which made me feel sorry and disappointed (I didn’t know why). But at last, just as I was sailing by, flash came the light in Mary Jane’s window! and my heart swelled up suddenly, ready to burst; and the same second the house and all were behind me in the dark, and were never going to be before me again in this world. She was the best girl I ever saw, and had the most sand.

The minute I was far enough above the town to see that I could make the towhead, I began to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn’t chained I snatched it and shoved off. It was a canoe, and wasn’t fastened with anything but a rope. The towhead was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the river, but I didn’t lose any time; and when I struck the raft at last I was so worn out that I would have just lain down to blow and gasp if I could have afforded it. But I didn’t. As I sprang aboard I sang out:

“Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we’re rid of them!”

Jim lit out, and was coming for me with both arms spread—he was so full of joy—but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and I went overboard backward; for I forgot he was old King Lear and a drowned Arab all in one, and it almost scared the livers and lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and bless me, and so on—he was so glad I was back and we were rid of the king and the duke—but I said:

“Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and let her slide!”

So in two seconds away we went sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack my heels a few times—I couldn’t help it; but about the third crack I noticed a sound that I knew mighty well, and held my breath and listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash burst out over the water, here they came!—and just laying to their oars and making their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.

So I wilted right down onto the planks then, and gave up; and it was all I could do to keep from crying.