Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn’t get any track of Tom; and both of them sat at the table thinking, and not saying anything, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. And by and by the old man said:

“Did I give you the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The one I got yesterday out of the post office.”

“No, you didn’t give me any letter.”

“Well, I must have forgotten it.”

So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewhere where he had laid it down, and fetched it, and gave it to her. She said:

“Why, it’s from St. Petersburg—it’s from Sis.”

I reckoned another walk would do me good; but I couldn’t stir. But before she could break it open she dropped it and ran—for she saw something. And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and Jim, in her calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that came handy, and rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and said:

“Oh, he’s dead, he’s dead, I know he’s dead!”

And Tom turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he wasn’t in his right mind; then she flung up her hands, and said:

“He’s alive, thank God! And that’s enough!” and she snatched a kiss from him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, scattering orders right and left at the enslaved people and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way.

I followed the men to see what they were going to do with Jim; and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men were very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim as an example to all the other enslaved people around there, so they wouldn’t be trying to run away as Jim did, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared nearly to death for days and nights. But the others said, don’t do it, it wouldn’t do at all; he isn’t our enslaved man, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people who are always the most anxious to hang an enslaved man who hasn’t done just right are always the very ones who aren’t the most anxious to pay for him when they’ve got their satisfaction out of him.

They cussed Jim considerably, though, and gave him a cuff or two on the side of the head once in a while, but Jim never said anything, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to any bed leg this time, but to a big staple driven into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he wasn’t to have anything but bread and water to eat after this until his owner came, or he was sold at auction because the owner didn’t come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around the cabin every night, and a bulldog must be tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time they were through with the job and were tapering off with a kind of general goodbye cussing, and then the old doctor came and took a look, and said:

“Don’t be any rougher on him than you’re obliged to, because he isn’t a bad man. When I got to where I found the boy I saw I couldn’t cut the bullet out without some help, and he wasn’t in any condition for me to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn’t let me come near him anymore, and said if I chalked his raft he’d kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and I saw I couldn’t do anything at all with him; so I said, I’ve got to have help somehow; and the minute I said it, out crawled this man from somewhere and said he’d help, and he did it, too, and did it very well. Of course I judged he must be a runaway enslaved man, and there I was! and there I had to stick right straight along all the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell you! I had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course I would have liked to run up to town and see them, but I didn’t dare, because the man might get away, and then I’d be to blame; and yet never a skiff came close enough for me to hail. So there I had to stick right up until daylight this morning; and I never saw an enslaved man who was a better nurse or more faithful, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, and I saw plain enough he had been worked mighty hard lately. I liked the man for that; I tell you, gentlemen, an enslaved man like that is worth a thousand dollars—and kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would have done at home—better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I was, with both of them on my hands, and there I had to stick until about dawn this morning; then some men in a skiff came by, and as good luck would have it the man was sitting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees, sound asleep; so I motioned them in quietly, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and tied him before he knew what he was about, and we never had any trouble. And the boy being in a kind of flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nicely and quietly, and the man never made the least row or said a word from the start. He isn’t a bad man, gentlemen; that’s what I think about him.”

Somebody said:

“Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I’m obliged to say.”

Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man the first time I saw him. Then they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and deserved to have some notice taken of it, and a reward. So every one of them promised, right out and heartily, that they wouldn’t cuss him anymore.

Then they came out and locked him up. I hoped they were going to say he could have one or two of the chains taken off, because they were rotten heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they didn’t think of it, and I reckoned it wasn’t best for me to mix in, but I judged I would get the doctor’s yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon as I had gotten through the breakers that were lying just ahead of me—explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention Sid being shot when I was telling how he and I put in that dratted night paddling around hunting the runaway enslaved man.

But I had plenty of time. Aunt Sally stuck to the sickroom all day and all night, and every time I saw Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged him.

The next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally had gone to get a nap. So I slipped to the sickroom, and if I found him awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peacefully, too; and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he came. So I sat down and waited for him to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally came gliding in, and there I was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still, and sat down by me, and began to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms were first-rate, and he had been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and more peaceful all the time, and ten to one he would wake up in his right mind.

So we sat there watching, and by and by he stirred a bit, and opened his eyes very naturally, and took a look, and said:

“Hello!—why, I’m at home! How’s that? Where’s the raft?”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“And Jim?”

“The same,” I said, but couldn’t say it very brashly. But he never noticed, but said:

“Good! Splendid! Now we’re all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?”

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and said: “About what, Sid?”

“Why, about the way the whole thing was done.”

“What whole thing?”

“Why, the whole thing. There’s only one; how we set the runaway enslaved man free—Tom and I.”

“Good land! Set the run— What is the child talking about! Dear, dear, out of his head again!”

“No, I’m not out of my HEAD; I know all that I’m talking about. We did set him free—Tom and I. We set out to do it, and we did it. And we did it elegantly, too.” He had gotten a start, and she never checked him, just sat and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I saw it was no use for me to put in. “Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work—weeks of it—hours and hours, every night, while you were all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case knives, and the warming pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can’t imagine what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can’t imagine half the fun it was. And we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and anonymous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket—”

“Mercy sakes!”

“—and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you came near spoiling the whole business, because the men came before we were out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs came they weren’t interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and were all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we did it all by ourselves, and wasn’t it first-rate, Aunty!”

“Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was you, you little rapscallions, who have been making all this trouble, and have turned everybody’s wits clean inside out and scared us all nearly to death. I have as good a notion as I ever had in my life to take it out of you this very minute. To think, here I’ve been, night after night, a—you just get well once, you young scamp, and I bet I’ll tan the Old Harry out of both of you!”

But Tom was so proud and joyful that he just couldn’t hold in, and his tongue just went it—she chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she said:

“Well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind, I tell you, if I catch you meddling with him again—”

“Meddling with whom?” Tom said, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

“With whom? Why, the runaway enslaved man, of course. Whom would you reckon?”

Tom looked at me very gravely, and said:

“Tom, didn’t you just tell me he was all right? Hasn’t he gotten away?”

“Him?” said Aunt Sally; “the runaway enslaved man? Indeed he hasn’t. They’ve got him back, safe and sound, and he’s in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, until he’s claimed or sold!”

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sang out to me:

“They haven’t any right to shut him up! Shove!—and don’t you lose a minute. Turn him loose! He isn’t a slave; he’s as free as any creature that walks this earth!”

“What does the child mean?”

“I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody doesn’t go, I’ll go. I’ve known him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed that she had ever intended to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will.”

“Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?”

“Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I wanted the adventure of it; and I would have waded neck-deep in blood to—goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!”

If she wasn’t standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I hope I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and almost hugged the head off her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, it seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in a little while Tom’s Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there looking across at Tom over her spectacles—kind of grinding him into the earth, you know. And then she said:

“Yes, you had better turn your head away—I would if I were you, Tom.”

“Oh, deary me!” said Aunt Sally; “is he changed so? Why, that isn’t Tom, it’s Sid; Tom’s—Tom’s—why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago.”

“You mean where’s Huck Finn—that’s what you mean! I reckon I haven’t raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed, Huck Finn.”

So I did it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally was one of the most mixed-up-looking persons I ever saw—except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he came in and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn’t know anything at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting sermon that night that gave him a rattling reputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn’t have understood it. So Tom’s Aunt Polly told all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer—she chipped in and said, “Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I’m used to it now, and there’s no need to change”—that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I had to stand it—there was no other way, and I knew he wouldn’t mind, because it would be a treat for him, being a mystery, and he’d make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and taken all that trouble and bother to set a free Black man free! And I couldn’t ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a person set an enslaved man free, with his upbringing.

Well, Aunt Polly said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and Sid had come all right and safe, she said to herself:

“Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that way without anybody to watch him. So now I’ve got to go and traipse all the way down the river, eleven hundred miles, and find out what that creature is up to this time; as long as I couldn’t seem to get any answer out of you about it.”

“Why, I never heard anything from you,” said Aunt Sally.

“Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by Sid being here.”

“Well, I never got them, Sis.”

Aunt Polly turned around slowly and severely, and said:

“You, Tom!”

“Well—what?” he said, kind of pettish.

“Don’t you what me, you impudent thing—hand out those letters.”

“What letters?”

“Those letters. I’ll be bound, if I have to take hold of you I’ll—”

“They’re in the trunk. There, now. And they’re just the same as they were when I got them out of the office. I haven’t looked into them, I haven’t touched them. But I knew they’d make trouble, and I thought if you weren’t in any hurry, I’d—”

“Well, you do need skinning, there’s no mistake about it. And I wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I suppose he—”

“No, it came yesterday; I haven’t read it yet, but it’s all right, I’ve got that one.”

I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn’t, but I reckoned maybe it was just as safe not to. So I never said anything.

CHAPTER THE LAST

The first time I caught Tom in private I asked him what his idea had been at the time of the evasion—what it was he had planned to do if the evasion worked all right and he managed to set free a Black man who was already free. And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and have adventures all the way to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the Black people around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how well he had helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up splendidly, and gave him all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him up to the sickroom, and had a high talk; and Tom gave Jim forty dollars for being a prisoner for us so patiently, and doing it up so well, and Jim was pleased nearly to death, and busted out, and said:

“There, now, Huck, what did I tell you?—what did I tell you up there on Jackson’s Island? I told you I had a hairy breast, and what the sign of it is; and I told you I was rich once, and was going to be rich again; and it’s come true; and here she is! There, now! Don’t talk to me—signs are signs, mind you, I tell you; and I knew just as well that I was going to be rich again as I’m standing here this minute!”

And then Tom talked along and talked along, and said, let’s all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures among the Native Americans, over in the Territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and I said, all right, that suits me, but I don’t have any money to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn’t get any from home, because it’s likely Pap has been back before now, and gotten it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

“No, he hasn’t,” Tom said; “it’s all there yet—six thousand dollars and more; and your father hasn’t ever been back since. He hadn’t when I came away, anyhow.”

Jim said, kind of solemnly:

“He isn’t coming back anymore, Huck.”

I said:

“Why, Jim?”

“Never mind why, Huck—but he isn’t coming back anymore.”

But I kept at him; so at last he said:

“Don’t you remember the house that was floating down the river, and there was a man in there, covered up, and I went in and uncovered him and didn’t let you come in? Well, then, you can get your money when you want it, because that was him.”

Tom’s almost well now, and has his bullet around his neck on a watch guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there isn’t anything more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I had known what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t have tackled it, and I’m not going to anymore. But I reckon I’ve got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally is going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can’t stand it. I’ve been there before.

THE END. YOURS TRULY, HUCK FINN.