Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen rats of the finest kind; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we were gone for spiders, little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Alexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally came in, and when we got back she was standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats were doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she dusted us both with the hickory, and we were as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they weren’t the likeliest, either, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never saw a likelier lot of rats than that first haul was.

We got a splendid stock of assorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we almost got a hornet’s nest, but we didn’t. The family was at home. We didn’t give it up right away, but stayed with them as long as we could, because we figured we would tire them out or they would have to tire us out, and they did it. Then we got elecampane and rubbed it on the places, and were pretty nearly all right again, but couldn’t sit down comfortably. And so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garter snakes and house snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was suppertime, after a rattling good honest day’s work—and hungry? Oh, no, I reckon not! And there wasn’t a blessed snake up there when we went back—we didn’t tie the sack properly, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn’t matter much, because they were still on the premises somewhere. So we judged we could get some of them again. No, there was no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You would see them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they generally landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn’t want them. Well, they were handsome and striped, and there was no harm in a million of them; but that never made any difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, whatever the breed might be, and she couldn’t stand them any way you could fix it; and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn’t make any difference what she was doing; she would just lay that work down and light out. I never saw such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take hold of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man so much that he said he could almost wish there had never been any snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week, Aunt Sally wasn’t over it yet; she wasn’t nearly over it; when she was sitting thinking about something, you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women were just that way. He said they were made that way for some reason or other.

We got a whipping every time one of our snakes came in her way, and she declared these whippings were nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the whippings, because they didn’t amount to anything; but I minded the trouble of having to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never saw a cabin as cheerful as Jim’s was when they all swarmed out for music and went for him. Jim didn’t like the spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they would lie in wait for him, and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone there was scarcely any room in bed for him; and when there was, a person couldn’t sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turns, so when the snakes were asleep the rats were on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes came on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and the other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time, he would never be a prisoner again, not for a salary.

Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal while the ink was fresh; the pens were made, the inscriptions and so on were all carved on the grindstone; the bed leg was sawed in two, and we had eaten up the sawdust, and it gave us a most amazing stomachache. We reckoned we were all going to die, but we didn’t. It was the most indigestible sawdust I ever saw; and Tom said the same.

But as I was saying, we had gotten all the work done now, at last; and we were all pretty much worn out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had written a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway enslaved man, but hadn’t gotten any answer, because there was no such plantation; so he said he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones, it gave me the cold shivers, and I saw we had no time to lose. So Tom said, now for the anonymous letters.

“What are those?” I said.

“Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one way, sometimes another. But there’s always somebody spying around who gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI was going to light out of the Tooleries, a servant girl did it. It’s a very good way, and so are the anonymous letters. We’ll use them both. And it’s usual for the prisoner’s mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We’ll do that, too.”

“But look here, Tom, why do we want to warn anybody that something’s up? Let them find it out for themselves—it’s their lookout.”

“Yes, I know; but you can’t depend on them. It’s the way they’ve acted from the very start—left us to do everything. They’re so confiding and mullet-headed that they don’t take notice of anything at all. So if we don’t give them notice, there won’t be anybody or anything to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape will go off perfectly flat; it won’t amount to anything—there won’t be anything to it.”

“Well, as for me, Tom, that’s the way I’d like.”

“Shucks!” he said, and looked disgusted. So I said:

“But I’m not going to make any complaint. Any way that suits you suits me. What are you going to do about the servant girl?”

“You’ll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook the frock of that girl of mixed descent.”

“Why, Tom, that’ll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she probably doesn’t have any but that one.”

“I know; but you only need it for fifteen minutes, to carry the anonymous letter and shove it under the front door.”

“All right, then, I’ll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my own togs.”

“You wouldn’t look like a servant girl then, would you?”

“No, but there won’t be anybody to see what I look like, anyway.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Don’t you have any principle at all?”

“All right, I’m not saying anything; I’m the servant girl. Who’s Jim’s mother?”

“I’m his mother. I’ll hook a gown from Aunt Sally.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to stay in the cabin when Jim and I leave.”

“Not much. I’ll stuff Jim’s clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim will take the enslaved woman’s gown off me and wear it, and we’ll all evade together. When a prisoner of style escapes, it’s called an evasion. It’s always called so when a king escapes, for instance. And the same with a king’s son; it doesn’t make any difference whether he’s a natural one or an unnatural one.”

So Tom wrote the anonymous letter, and I swiped the frock of the young woman of mixed descent that night, and put it on, and shoved the letter under the front door, the way Tom told me to. It said:

Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. UNKNOWN FRIEND.

The next night we stuck a picture of a skull and crossbones, which Tom drew in blood, on the front door; and the next night another one, of a coffin, on the back door. I never saw a family in such a sweat. They couldn’t have been more scared if the place had been full of ghosts lying in wait for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally jumped and said “Ouch!” If anything fell, she jumped and said “Ouch!” If you happened to touch her when she wasn’t noticing, she did the same; she couldn’t face any direction and be satisfied, because she figured there was something behind her every time—so she was always whirling around suddenly, and saying “Ouch,” and before she had gotten two-thirds around she would whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she didn’t dare sit up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he never saw a thing work more satisfactorily. He said it showed it was done right.

So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and were wondering what we had better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they were going to have an enslaved man on watch at both doors all night. Tom went down the lightning rod to spy around; and the enslaved man at the back door was asleep, and he stuck the letter in the back of his neck and came back. This letter said:

Don’t betray me; I wish to be your friend. There is a desperate gang of cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway enslaved man tonight, and they have been trying to scare you so that you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have gotten religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will betray the hellish design. They will sneak down from the north, along the fence, at midnight exactly, with a false key, and go in the enslaved man’s cabin to get him. I am to be off a little way and blow a tin horn if I see any danger; but instead of that I will BAA like a sheep as soon as they get in and not blow at all; then while they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leisure. Don’t do anything except just the way I am telling you; if you do, they will suspect something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

UNKNOWN FRIEND