Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

We didn’t dare stop again at any town for days and days; we kept right along down the river. We were down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long way from home. We began to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first time I ever saw it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they were out of danger, and they began to work the villages again.

First they did a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn’t know any more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn’t yellocute long until the audience got up and gave them a solid good cursing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have any luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and lay around the raft as she floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying anything, for half a day at a time, and dreadfully blue and desperate.

And at last they changed tack and began to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidentially two or three hours at a time. Jim and I got uneasy. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they were studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they were going to break into somebody’s house or store, or were going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then we were pretty scared, and made an agreement that we wouldn’t have anything in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least chance we would give them the cold shoulder and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two miles below a little bit of a shabby village named Pikesville, and the king went ashore and told us all to stay hidden while he went up to town and smelled around to see if anybody had gotten any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to rob, you mean,” I said to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft—and you’ll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he wasn’t back by midday the duke and I would know it was all right, and we were to come along.

So we stayed where we were. The duke fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn’t seem to do anything right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday came and no king; we could have a change, anyway—and maybe a chance for the change on top of it. So the duke and I went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low saloon, very drunk, and a lot of loafers badgering him for sport, and he cursing and threatening with all his might, and so drunk he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t do anything to them. The duke began to abuse him for an old fool, and the king began to sass back, and the minute they were fairly at it I lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, for I saw our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever saw me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sang out:

“Set her loose, Jim! We’re all right now!”

But there was no answer, and nobody came out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set up a shout—and then another—and then another one; and ran this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it was no use—old Jim was gone. Then I sat down and cried; I couldn’t help it. But I couldn’t sit still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I had better do, and I ran across a boy walking, and asked him if he had seen a strange enslaved man dressed so and so, and he said:

“Yes.”

“Whereabouts?” I said.

“Down at Silas Phelps’ place, two miles below here. He’s a runaway enslaved man, and they have him. Were you looking for him?”

“You bet I wasn’t! I ran across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I hollered he would cut my liver out—and told me to lie down and stay where I was; and I did it. I’ve been there ever since, afraid to come out.”

“Well,” he said, “you don’t need to be afraid anymore, because they have him. He ran off from down South, somewhere.”

“It’s a good thing they got him.”

“Well, I reckon! There’s a two-hundred-dollar reward on him. It’s like picking up money out of the road.”

“Yes, it is—and I could have had it if I had been big enough; I saw him first. Who nailed him?”

“It was an old fellow—a stranger—and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, because he has to go up the river and can’t wait. Think of that, now! You bet I’d wait, if it was seven years.”

“That’s me, every time,” I said. “But maybe his chance isn’t worth any more than that, if he’ll sell it so cheap. Maybe there’s something that isn’t straight about it.”

“But it is, though—straight as a string. I saw the handbill myself. It tells all about him, to a dot—paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he’s from, below New Orleans. No sirree, Bob, there’s no trouble about that speculation, you bet. Say, give me a chew of tobacco, won’t you?”

I didn’t have any, so he left. I went to the raft, and sat down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn’t come to anything. I thought until I wore my head sore, but I couldn’t see any way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we had done for those scoundrels, here it had all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to play such a trick on Jim as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and among strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he had to be a slave, and so I had better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where Jim was. But I soon gave up that notion for two reasons: she would be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she would sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful enslaved man, and they would make Jim feel it all the time, and so he would feel mean and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped an enslaved man to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I would be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he doesn’t want to take the consequences of it. He thinks that as long as he can hide it, it is no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I thought about this, the more my conscience ground away at me, and the more wicked and low-down and mean I came to feel. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, while I was stealing a poor old woman’s enslaved man, who had never done me any harm, and now was showing me there is One who is always on the lookout, and is not going to allow any such miserable doings to go only just so far and no further, I was so scared that I almost dropped in my tracks. Well, I tried the best I could to kind of soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brought up wicked, and so I wasn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday school; you could have gone to it; and if you had done it they would have taught you there that people who act as I had been acting about that enslaved man go to everlasting fire.”

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of boy I was and be better. So I knelt down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It was no use trying to hide it from Him. Nor from me, either. I knew very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart wasn’t right; it was because I wasn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but far inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that enslaved man’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knew it was a lie, and He knew it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and I didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I said, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and sat down and wrote:

Miss Watson, your runaway enslaved man Jim is down here two miles below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

Huck Finn.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knew I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and sat there thinking—thinking how good it was that all this happened so, and how near I came to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I saw Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the nighttime, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we were floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike any places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I would see him standing my watch on top of his own, instead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I came back out of the fog; and when I came to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and times like that; and he would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he had now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I had to decide, forever, between two things, and I knew it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then said to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they were said. And I let them stay said; and never thought any more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brought up to it, and the other wasn’t. And for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.

Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over quite a number of ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river a little way, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below where I judged Phelps’s place was, and hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sank her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.

Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I saw a sign on it, “Phelps’s Sawmill,” and when I came to the farmhouses, two or three hundred yards farther along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see anybody around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn’t mind, because I didn’t want to see anybody just yet—I only wanted to get the lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. Well, the very first man I saw when I got there was the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch—three-night performance—like that other time. They had the cheek, those frauds! I was right on him before I could dodge. He looked astonished, and said:

“Hello! Where did you come from?” Then he said, kind of glad and eager, “Where’s the raft?—did you put her in a good place?”

I said:

“Why, that’s just what I was going to ask your grace.”

Then he didn’t look so joyful, and said:

“What was your idea for asking me?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “when I saw the king in that saloon yesterday I said to myself, we can’t get him home for hours, until he’s more sober; so I went loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we were dragging him to the boat, and the man left me holding the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and ran, and we were after him. We didn’t have a dog, and so we had to chase him all over the country until we tired him out. We never got him until dark; then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and saw it was gone, I said to myself, ‘They’ve gotten into trouble and had to leave; and they’ve taken my enslaved man, who is the only enslaved man I have in the world, and now I’m in a strange country, and I have no property anymore, nor anything, and no way to make my living;’ so I sat down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what did become of the raft, then?—and Jim—poor Jim!”

“Blamed if I know—that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the saloon the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and gotten every cent but what he’d spent for whiskey; and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little rascal has stolen our raft and shaken us, and run off down the river.’”

“I wouldn’t shake my enslaved man, would I?—the only enslaved man I had in the world, and the only property.”

“We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we had come to consider him our enslaved man; yes, we did consider him so—goodness knows we had trouble enough for him. So when we saw the raft was gone and we were flat broke, there wasn’t anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake. And I’ve pegged along ever since, dry as a powder horn. Where’s that ten cents? Give it here.”

I had considerable money, so I gave him ten cents, but begged him to spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the money I had, and I hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday. He never said anything. The next minute he whirled on me and said:

“Do you reckon that enslaved man would blow on us? We’d skin him if he did that!”

“How can he blow? Hasn’t he run off?”

“No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money’s gone.”

“Sold him?” I said, and began to cry; “why, he was my enslaved man, and that was my money. Where is he?—I want my enslaved man.”

“Well, you can’t get your enslaved man, that’s all—so dry up your blubbering. Look here—do you think you’d venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think I’d trust you. Why, if you were to blow on us—”

He stopped, but I never saw the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. I went on whimpering, and said:

“I don’t want to blow on anybody; and I don’t have any time to blow, anyhow. I have to get out and find my enslaved man.”

He looked kind of bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he said:

“I’ll tell you something. We have to be here three days. If you’ll promise you won’t blow, and won’t let the enslaved man blow, I’ll tell you where to find him.”

So I promised, and he said:

“A farmer by the name of Silas Ph—” and then he stopped. You see, he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and began to study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he was. He wouldn’t trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he said:

“The man who bought him is named Abram Foster—Abram G. Foster—and he lives forty miles back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”

“All right,” I said, “I can walk it in three days. And I’ll start this very afternoon.”

“No, you won’t; you’ll start now; and don’t you lose any time about it, either, nor do any gabbling along the way. Just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along, and then you won’t get into trouble with us, do you hear?”

That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted to be left free to work my plans.

“So clear out,” he said; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your enslaved man—some fools don’t require documents—at least I’ve heard there are such down South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward are bogus, maybe he’ll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting them out. Go along now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you don’t work your jaw any between here and there.”

So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn’t look around, but I kind of felt as if he were watching me. But I knew I could tire him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods toward Phelps’. I reckoned I had better start in on my plan straight off without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim’s mouth until these fellows could get away. I didn’t want any trouble with their kind. I had seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely rid of them.