Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

We were feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper. We found them in such a sweat and worry that they didn’t know which end they were standing on, and they made us go right off to bed the minute we were done with supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but they didn’t need to, because we knew as much about it as anybody did. As soon as we were halfway upstairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half past eleven. Tom put on Aunt Sally’s dress that he had stolen and was going to start with the lunch, but said:

“Where’s the butter?”

“I laid out a hunk of it,” I said, “on a piece of corn pone.”

“Well, you left it laid out, then—it isn’t here.”

“We can get along without it,” I said.

“We can get along with it, too,” he said; “just you slide down to the cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning rod and come along. I’ll go and stuff the straw into Jim’s clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to baa like a sheep and shove off as soon as you get there.”

So out he went, and down to the cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person’s fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn pone with it on, and blew out my light, and started upstairs very stealthily, and got up to the main floor all right, but here came Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she saw me; and she said:

“Have you been down to the cellar?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What have you been doing down there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“You don’t know? Don’t answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you have been doing down there.”

“I haven’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally—I hope to gracious if I have.”

I reckoned she would let me go now, and as a general thing she would; but I suppose there were so many strange things going on that she was just in a sweat about every little thing that wasn’t yardstick straight; so she said, very decidedly:

“You just march into that sitting room and stay there until I come. You have been up to something you had no business doing, and I bet I’ll find out what it is before I’m done with you.”

So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the sitting room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. I was mighty sick, and slunk to a chair and sat down. They were sitting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look as if they weren’t; but I knew they were, because they were always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. I wasn’t easy myself, but I didn’t take my hat off, all the same.

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and whip me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we had overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s nest we had gotten ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before these fellows got out of patience and came for us.

At last she came and began to ask me questions, but I couldn’t answer them straight; I didn’t know which end of me was up; because these men were in such a fidget now that some were wanting to start right now and lie in wait for those desperadoes, and saying it was only a few minutes to midnight; and others were trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks, I was so scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them said, “I’m for going and getting in the cabin first and right now, and catching them when they come,” I almost dropped; and a streak of butter came trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally saw it, and turned white as a sheet, and said:

“For the land’s sake, what is the matter with the child? He’s got the brain fever as sure as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”

And everybody ran to see, and she snatched off my hat, and out came the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and said:

“Oh, what a turn you did give me! And how glad and grateful I am it isn’t any worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I saw that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knew by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if—Dear, dear, why didn’t you tell me that was what you’d been down there for? I wouldn’t have cared. Now clear out to bed, and don’t let me see any more of you until morning!”

I was upstairs in a second, and down the lightning rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I was so anxious that I could hardly get my words out; but I told Tom as quickly as I could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose—the house full of men, yonder, with guns!

His eyes just blazed; and he said:

“No!—is that so? Isn’t it first-rate! Why, Huck, if it were to be done over again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off until—”

“Hurry! Hurry!” I said. “Where’s Jim?”

“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He’s dressed, and everything’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say:

“I told you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come—the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lie in wait for them in the dark and kill them when they come; and the rest scatter around a little way, and listen if you can hear them coming.”

So in they came, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and almost trod on us while we were hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft—Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we were in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out anything—it was so dark; and he whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get farther away, and when he nudged us, Jim must glide out first, and he last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthily toward the fence in single file, and got to it all right, and Jim and I over it; but Tom’s pants caught fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he heard the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sang out:

“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”

But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved off. Then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang!—and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

“Here they are! They’ve broken for the river! After them, boys, and turn loose the dogs!”

So here they came, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn’t wear any boots and didn’t yell. We were in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close to us, we dodged into the bushes and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They had had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they came, making enough racket for a million; but they were our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks until they caught up; and when they saw it was nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead toward the shouting and clattering; and then we got up steam again, and whizzed along after them until we were nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bushes to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life toward the middle of the river, but didn’t make any more noise than we were obliged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, until we were so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped onto the raft, I said:

“Now, old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave anymore.”

“And a mighty good job it was, too, Huck. It was planned beautifully, and it was done beautifully; and there isn’t anybody who can get up a plan that’s more mixed-up and splendid than that one was.”

We were all as glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When Jim and I heard that, we didn’t feel as brash as we had before. It was hurting him considerably, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts to bandage him, but he said:

“Give me the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around here, with the evasion booming along so handsomely; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we did it elegantly!—indeed we did. I wish we’d had the handling of Louis XVI; there wouldn’t have been any ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ written down in his biography; no, sir, we’d have whooped him over the border—that’s what we’d have done with him—and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps—man the sweeps!”

But Jim and I were consulting—and thinking. And after we had thought a minute, I said:

“Say it, Jim.”

So he said:

“Well, then, this is the way it looks to me, Huck. If it were him who was being set free, and one of the boys were to get shot, would he say, ‘Go on and save me, never mind about a doctor to save this one’? Is that like Master Tom Sawyer? Would he say that? You bet he wouldn’t! Well, then, is Jim going to say it? No, sir—I don’t budge a step out of this place without a doctor; not if it’s forty years!”

I knew he was white inside, and I reckoned he would say what he did say—so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was going for a doctor. He raised a considerable row about it, but Jim and I stuck to it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn’t let him. Then he gave us a piece of his mind, but it didn’t do any good.

So when he saw me getting the canoe ready, he said:

“Well, then, if you’re bound to go, I’ll tell you the way to do it when you get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then lead him all around the back alleys and everywhere in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way among the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don’t give it back to him until you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It’s the way they all do.”

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he saw the doctor coming until he was gone again.