Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It would be almost an hour yet until breakfast, so we left and struck down into the woods, because Tom said we had to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble. What we had to have was a lot of those rotten chunks that are called foxfire and just make a soft kind of glow when you lay them in a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and sat down to rest, and Tom said, kind of dissatisfied:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. There isn’t any watchman to be drugged—now there ought to be a watchman. There isn’t even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to. And there’s Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you have to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle Silas trusts everybody; he sends the key to the pumpkin-headed enslaved man, and doesn’t send anybody to watch the enslaved man. Jim could have gotten out of that window hole before this, only there wouldn’t be any use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I ever saw. You have to invent all the difficulties. Well, we can’t help it; we have to do the best we can with the materials we have. Anyhow, there’s one thing—there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, when not one of them was furnished to you by the people whose duty it was to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that one thing about the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we simply have to let on that a lantern is risky. Why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, while I think of it, we have to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get.”

“What do we want a saw for?”

“What do we want it for? Don’t we have to saw the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose?”

“Why, you just said a person could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off.”

“Well, if that isn’t just like you, Huck Finn. You can get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, haven’t you ever read any books at all?—Baron Trenck, or Casanova, or Benvenuto Chelleeny, or Henri IV, or any of those heroes? Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the way all the best authorities do it is to saw the bed leg in two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneschal can’t see any sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bed leg is perfectly sound. Then, the night you’re ready, give the leg a kick, and down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat—because a rope ladder is nineteen feet too short, you know—and there are your horses and your trusty vassals, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is. It’s grand, Huck. I wish there were a moat around this cabin. If we get time on the night of the escape, we’ll dig one.”

I said:

“What do we want a moat for when we’re going to snake him out from under the cabin?”

But he didn’t hear me. He had forgotten me and everything else. He had his chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighed and shook his head; then sighed again, and said:

“No, it wouldn’t do—there isn’t enough necessity for it.”

“For what?” I said.

“Why, to saw Jim’s leg off,” he said.

“Good land!” I said; “why, there isn’t any necessity for it. And what would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?”

“Well, some of the best authorities have done it. They couldn’t get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would be better still. But we have to let that go. There isn’t enough necessity in this case; and, besides, Jim’s a Black man, and he wouldn’t understand the reasons for it, and how it’s the custom in Europe; so we’ll let it go. But there’s one thing—he can have a rope ladder; we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easily enough. And we can send it to him in a pie; it’s mostly done that way. And I’ve eaten worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I said; “Jim has no use for a rope ladder.”

“He does have a use for it. How you talk, you’d better say; you don’t know anything about it. He has to have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the world can he do with it?”

“Do with it? He can hide it in his bed, can’t he? That’s what they all do; and he has to, too. Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to do anything that’s regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. Suppose he doesn’t do anything with it? Isn’t it there in his bed, for a clue, after he’s gone? And don’t you reckon they’ll want clues? Of course they will. And you wouldn’t leave them any? That would be a pretty how-do-you-do, wouldn’t it! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I said, “if it’s in the regulations, and he has to have it, all right, let him have it; because I don’t wish to go back on any regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer—if we start tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we’re going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born. Now, the way I look at it, a hickory-bark ladder doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t waste anything, and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he hasn’t had any experience, and so he doesn’t care what kind of a—”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I were as ignorant as you, I’d keep still—that’s what I’d do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickory-bark ladder? Why, it’s perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off the clothesline.”

He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he said:

“Borrow a shirt, too.”

“What do we want a shirt for, Tom?”

“I want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”

“Journal your granny—Jim can’t write.”

“Suppose he can’t write—he can make marks on the shirt, can’t he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel hoop?”

“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too.”

“Prisoners don’t have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you dunce. They always make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they have to do it by rubbing it on the wall. They wouldn’t use a goose quill if they had one. It isn’t regular.”

“Well, then, what’ll we make him the ink out of?”

“Many make it out of iron rust and tears; but that’s for the common sort and for women; the best authorities use their own blood. Jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he’s captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask always did that, and it’s a blamed good way, too.”

“Jim doesn’t have any tin plates. They feed him in a pan.”

“That’s nothing; we can get him some.”

“Nobody can read his plates.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it, Huck Finn. All he has to do is write on the plate and throw it out. You don’t have to be able to read it. Why, half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”

“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”

“Why, blame it all, they aren’t the prisoner’s plates.”

“But they’re somebody’s plates, aren’t they?”

“Well, suppose they are? What does the prisoner care whose—”

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast horn blowing. So we cleared out for the house.

Along in the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off the clothesline; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the foxfire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what Pap always called it; but Tom said it wasn’t borrowing; it was stealing. He said we were representing prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing as long as they get it, and nobody blames them for it, either. It’s no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we were representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place that we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we weren’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he wasn’t a prisoner. So we agreed we would steal everything there was that came handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the enslaved people’s patch and ate it; and he made me go and give the enslaved people a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I said, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with; there’s where the difference was. He said if I had wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneschal with, it would have been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see any advantage in my representing a prisoner if I had to sit down and chew over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I saw a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning until everybody had settled down to business, and nobody was in sight around the yard; then Tom carried the sack into the lean-to while I stood off a little way to keep watch. By and by he came out, and we went and sat down on the woodpile to talk. He said:

“Everything’s all right now except tools; and that’s easily fixed.”

“Tools?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Tools for what?”

“Why, to dig with. We’re not going to gnaw him out, are we?”

“Aren’t those old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig an enslaved man out with?” I said.

He turned on me, looking pitying enough to make a person cry, and said:

“Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now I want to ask you—if you have any reasonableness in you at all—what kind of a chance would it give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key and be done with it. Picks and shovels—why, they wouldn’t furnish them to a king.”

“Well, then,” I said, “if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do we want?”

“A couple of case knives.”

“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”

“Yes.”

“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”

“It doesn’t make any difference how foolish it is; it’s the right way—and it’s the regular way. And there isn’t any other way that I ever heard of, and I’ve read all the books that give any information about these things. They always dig out with a case knife—and not through dirt, mind you; generally it’s through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and forever and ever. Why, look at one of those prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, who dug himself out that way; how long was he at it, do you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, guess.”

“I don’t know. A month and a half.”

“Thirty-seven years—and he came out in China. That’s the kind. I wish the bottom of this fortress were solid rock.”

“Jim doesn’t know anybody in China.”

“What does that have to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But you’re always wandering off on a side issue. Why can’t you stick to the main point?”

“All right—I don’t care where he comes out, as long as he comes out; and Jim doesn’t, either, I reckon. But there’s one thing, anyway—Jim’s too old to be dug out with a case knife. He won’t last.”

“Yes, he will last, too. You don’t reckon it’s going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?”

“Well, we can’t risk being as long as we ought to, because it may not take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He’ll hear Jim isn’t from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can’t risk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to take a couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quickly as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we were at it thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that’ll be the best way.”

“Now, there’s sense in that,” I said. “Letting on doesn’t cost anything; letting on is no trouble; and if it’s any object, I don’t mind letting on we were at it a hundred and fifty years. It wouldn’t strain me any, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now and swipe a couple of case knives.”

“Swipe three,” he said; “we want one to make a saw out of.”

“Tom, if it isn’t irregular and irreligious to suggest it,” I said, “there’s an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smokehouse.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged, and said:

“It’s no use trying to teach you anything, Huck. Run along and swipe the knives—three of them.” So I did it.