me just laying to their oars and making their skiv hum it was the king and the duke so i wilted right down on the planks then and give up and it was all i could do to keep from crying end of chapter 29 chapter 30 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this sleepry fox recording is in the public domain chapter 30 the king went for him a royal row powerful mellow when they got aboard the king went for me and shook me by the color and says trying to give us to slip was you you pup tired of our company a i says no your majesty we weren't uh please don't your majesty quick then tell us what was your idea or i'll shake the insides out of you honest i'll tell you everything just as it happened your majesty the man that had a hold to me was very good to me and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix and when they all took by surprise by finding the gold i made a rush for the coffin he lets go of me and whispers heal it now i'll hang it for sure and i let out it didn't seem no good for me to stay i couldn't do nothing and i didn't want to be hung if i could get away so i never stopped running till i found a canoe and when i got here i told jim to hurry are they catch me and hang me yet i said i wasn't fear you and the duke wasn't alive now and i was awful sorry and so was jim it was awful glad when we see you come and you may ask jim if i didn't jim said it was so and the king told him to shut up and said oh yes it's my the likely and shook me up again and said he reckoned he drowned me but the duke says let go the boy you old idiot would you have done any different did you inquire around for him when you got loose i don't remember it so the king let go of me and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it but the duke says you better blame side give yourself a good cussing for you're the one that's entitled to it most you ain't got a thing from the store that had any sense in it except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue outer mark that was bright it was right down bully and it was the thing that saved us for if it hadn't been for that they'd jailed us till englishman's baggage coming then the penitentiary you bet but that trick took him to the graveyard and the gold done us a still bigger kindness for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holds and made that rush to get a look we just slept in our cravats tonight cravats warranted to wear too longer than we need them they were still a minute thinking then the king says kind of absentminded like huh and we reckoned the niggas stole it that made me squirm yes says the duke kind of slow and deliberate and sarcastic we did after about half a minute the king draws out least ways i did the duke says the same way on the contrary i did the king kind of ruffles up and says looky here bilge water what are you referring to the duke says pretty brisk when it comes to that maybe you'll let me ask what was you referring to shucks says the king very sarcastic but i don't know maybe he was asleep and didn't know what you was about the duke bristles up now and says oh let up on this cussing nonsense do you take me for a blame fool don't you reckon i know who hid that money in that coffin yes sir i know you do know because you done it yourself it's a lie and the duke went for him the king sings out take your hands off lick on my throat i take it all back the duke says well you just own up first that you did hide that money there intended to give me the slip one of these days and come back and dig it up and have it all to yourself wait just a minute duke answer me this one question honest and fair if you didn't put the money there i say it and i'll believe you and take back everything i said you oh scoundrel i didn't you know i didn't there now well then i'll believe you but answer me just this one more now don't get mad didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it duke never said nothing for a little bit then he says well i don't care if i did i didn't do it anyway but you not only had it in your mind to do it but you done it i wished i never die if i'd done it duke and that's honest i won't say i weren't going to because i was but you i mean somebody got in ahead of me it's a lie you done it and you got to say you done it or the king began to gurgle and then he gasps out enough i won't up i was very glad to hear him say that it made me feel much easier than what i was feeling before so the duke took his hands off and says if you ever deny it again i'll drown you it's well for you to sit here and blubber like a baby it's fitting for you after the way you've acted i never seen such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything and i trust in you all the time like you was my own father you ought to be ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddle on to a lot of poor niggers and you never said a word for him it makes me feel ridiculous to think i was soft enough to believe that rubbish cuss you i can see now why you were so anxious to make up the deficit you wanted to get what money i'd got out of the nonsuch and one thing or another and scoop it all the king says timid and still a snuffling well duke it was you that said to make up the deficit it warned me dry up i don't want to hear no more out of you says the duke and now you see what you got by it they've got all that old money back and all of iron but a sheikler too besides going to bed and don't you deficit me no more deficit as long as you live so the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort and before long the duke tackled his bottle and so in about half an hour they was as thick as thieves again and the tighter they got the lovelier they got and went off a snoring in each other's arms they both got powerful mellow but i noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny but hide the money bag again that made me feel easy and satisfied of course when they got to snoring we had a long gavel and i told jim everything ender chapter 30 chapter 31 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 31 ominous plans news from jim old recollections a sheep story valuable information we'd ask and stop again at any town for days and days kept right along down the river we was down south in the warm weather now and a mud along ways 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 i ever see it growing and it made the woods look solemn and dismal so now the frauds reckon they was out of danger and they began to work the villages again first they'd done a lecture on temperance but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on then in another village they started a dance in school but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does so the first prince they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town another time they tried to go at yellow cushion but they didn't yellow cute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out they tackled missionary and and mesmerizing and doctrine and telling fortunes and a little of everything but they couldn't seem to have no luck so at last they got just about dead broke and laid around the raft as she floated along thinking and thinking and never saying nothing by the half a day at a time and dreadful blue and desperate and at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time jim and me got on easy we didn't like the look of it we judged they was studying up some kind of worse devil tree than ever we turned it over and over and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store i was going into the counterfeit and money business or something so then we was pretty scared and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake 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 he went ashore and told us all to stay hid while he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind at the royal none such there yet house to rob you mean says i to myself and when you get through robin it you'll come back he and wonder what has become of me and jim in the raft and you have to take it out and wondering and he said if he weren't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right and we was to come along so we stayed where we was the duke he fretted and sweated around and was in a modest hour away he scolded us for everything and we couldn't seem to do nothing right he found fault with every little thing something was a brewing sure i was good and glad when midday come and no king we could have a change anyway and maybe a chance for the change on top of it so me and the duke 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 doggery very tight and a lot of loafers bully ragging him for sport and he a cussing and a threatening with all his might and so tight he couldn't walk and he couldn't do nothing to them the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool and the king began to sass back and the minute they was 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 see our chance and i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and jim again i got down there all out of breath but loaded with joy and sung out center loose jim we're all right now but there weren't no answer and nobody come out of the wigwam jim was gone i set up a shout and then another and then another one and run this way and that in the woods whooping and screeching but it weren't no use so 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 better do and i run across the boy walking and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so and he says yes whereabouts says i'm down to silas felps this place two miles below here he's a runaway nigger and they've got him was you looking for him you bet i ain't i run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago and he said if i hollered he cut my livers out and told me to lay down and stay where i was and i've done it but been there ever since i feared to come out well he says you needn't be feared no more because they've got him he went off and down south summers it's a good job they got him well i reckon there's 200 dollars reward on him it's like picking money up out in the road it's like picking up money out in the road yes it is and i would have had it if i'd have been big enough i see him first who nailed him it was an old fella a stranger and he sold out his chance in him for 40 dollars because he's got to go up the river and can't wait think of that now you bet i'd wait if it was seven year that's me every time says i but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that if you'll sell it so cheap maybe there's something ain't straight about it but it is though straight as a string i see the handbill myself it tells all about him to a dot paints him like a picture and tells the plantation he's from below nerleens no so rebob ain't no trouble about that speculation you bet you say give me a char tobacco won't you i didn't have none so he left i went to the raft and sat down in the wig warm to think but i couldn't come to nothing i thought till i wore my head sore but i couldn't see no way out of the trouble after all this long journey and after all we'd done for them scoundrels here it was all come to nothing and everything all busted up and ruined because they could have the heart to serve jim such a trick 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 got to be a slave and so i'd better write a letter to tom sawyer and tell him to tell miss wassen where he was but i soon give up that notion for two things she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her and so she'd sell him straight down the river again and if she didn't everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger and they'd make jim feel it all the time and so he'd feel honorary and disgraced and then think of me it would get all around that huck finn helped a nigger to get his freedom huh and if i was ever to see anybody from that town again i'd 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 don't want to take no consequences of it thinks as long as he can hide it it ain't no disgrace that was my fix exactly the more i studied about this the more my conscious went to grind in me and the more wicked and low down in ordinary i got the feeling 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 whilst i was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm and now is showing me there's one that's always on the lookout and ain't going to allow no such miserable things to go only just so far and no further i almost dropped in my tracks i was so scared well i tried the best i could to kind of soften it up somehow for myself by saying i was brung up wicked and so i weren't so much to blame but something inside me kept saying there was the sunday school and you could have gone to it and if you'd have done it they'd have learnt you there that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes 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 kneeled but the words wouldn't come why wouldn't they it weren't no use to try and hide it from him nor for me neither i knowed very well why they wouldn't come it was because my heart weren't right it was because i weren't square it was because i was playing double i was letting on to give up sin but away 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 going right to that nigger's owner and tell where he was but deep down in me i knowed it was a lie and he noted you can't pray a lie i found that out so i was full of trouble full as i could be and didn't know what to do at last i had an idea and i says i'll go and write the letter and then see if i can pray why it was astonishing the way i felt there's a light as a feather right straight off and my trouble's gone so i got a piece of paper and a pencil all glad and excited and sat down and wrote miss watson your runaway nigger jim is down here two miles below pikesville and mr felps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send hook fin i felt good and all washed clean to sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life and i knowed i could pray now but i didn't do it straight off but laid the paper down and set their thinking thinking how good it was all this happened so and how near i come to being lost and going to hell and went on thinking and got the thinking over i tripped down the river and i see jim before me all the time in the day and in the night time sometimes moonlight sometimes storms and we are floating along talking and singing and laughing but somehow i couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him but only the other kind i'd see him standing my watch on top of his and instead of calling me so i could go on sleeping and see how glad he was when i come back out of the fog and when i come to him again in the swamp up there where the feud was and such like times and 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's got 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 a trembling because i'd got to decide forever twix two things and i knowed it i studied a minute sort of holding my breath then says to myself all right then i'll go to hell and tore it up it was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said and i let them stay said and never thought no 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 brung up to it and the other warrant 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'd do that too because as long as i was in and in for good i might as well go to whole hog then i set the thinking over how to get at it and turned over some considerable many ways in my mind and at last fixed up a plan that suited me so then i took the barons of a woody island that was down the river apiece and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out with my raft and went for it and hit 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 clear for sure i landed below where i judged was felps's place and hid my bundle in the woods and then filled up the canoe with water and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where i could find her again when i wanted her about a quarter of a mile below a little stream sawmill that was on the bank then i struck up the road and when i passed the mill i see a sign on it felps's sawmill and when i come to the farmhouses two or three hundred yards further along i keep my eyes peeled and didn't see nobody around though it was good daylight now but i didn't mind because i didn't want to see nobody 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 see when i got there was the duke he was sticking up a bill for the royal none such three night performance like that of the time they had the cheek them frauds i was right on him before i could shirk he looked astonished and says hello where you come from then he says kind of glad and eager where's the raft got her in a good place i says why that's just what i was going to ask your grace then he didn't look so joyful and says what was your idea for asking me he says well i says when i see the king in that doggery yesterday i says to myself we can't get him home for hours till he's soberer so i went a loafing around town to put in the time and wait a man up and off and meet ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep and so i went along and when we was dragging him to the boat and the man left me a hold to the rope and went behind him to show him along he was too strong for me and jerk loose and run and we after him we didn't have no dog and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out we never got him till dark then we fixed him over and i started down for the raft when i got there and see it was gone i says to myself they've got into trouble and had to leave and they took my nigger which is the only nigger i've got in the world and now i'm in a strange country and ain't got no property no more no nothing and no way to make my living so i sat down and cried i slept in the woods all night what did become of the raft him 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 doggery the loafers had mashed half dollars with him and got ever since for what he'd spent on whiskey when i got him home late last night and found the raft gone we said that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us and run off down the river i wouldn't shake my nigger would i the only nigger i had in the world and the only property we never thought of that fact is i reckon we come to consider him our nigger yes we did consider him so goodness knows we had trouble enough for him so when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke there weren't nothing for it but to try to roar on such another shake and i pegged along ever since dry as a powder horn where's that ten cents give it here i had considerable money so i'll give 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 nothing to eat since yesterday he never said nothing the next minute he worlds on me and says do you reckon that nigger would blow on us we'd skin him if he done that how can he blow hatey runoff no that old fool sold him and never divided with me and the money's gone sold him i says and begun to cry why he was my nigger and that was my money where is he i want my nigger well you can't get your nigger that's all so dry up your blubbering looky here do you think you'd venture to blow on us blamed if i think i trust you why if you was to blow on us he stopped but i never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before i went on a whimpering and says i don't want to blow on nobody i ain't got no time to blow know how i got to turn out and find my nigger he looked kinder bothered and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arm thinking and wrinkling up his forehead at last he says i'll tell you something we got to be here three days if you promise you won't blow and won't let the nigger blow i'll tell you where to find him so i promised and he says farmer by the name of silas then he stopped you see he started to tell me the truth but when he stopped that way and begun to study and think again i reckon 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 says the man that bought him is named abram foster abram g foster and he lives 40 mile back here in the country on the road to Lafayette all right i says 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 neither nor do any gablin on 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 out my plans so clear out he says and you can tell mr foster whatever you want to maybe you can get him to believe that jim is your nigger some id just don't require documents least ways i've heard there's such down south here and when you tell him the handbill and the rewards bogus maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting him out so go along and tell him anything you want to but mind you don't work your jar any between here and there so i left and struck for the back country i didn't look around but i kind of felt like he was watching me but i know what i would tire him out at that i went straight out in the country as much as a mile before i stopped then i double back through the woods towards phelps's i reckon i better start in on my plan straight off without fooling around because i wanted to stop jim's mouth till these fellows could get away i didn't want no trouble with their kind i'd seen all i wanted to do with them and wanted to get entirely shut of them end of chapter 31 chapter 32 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 32 still and sunday-like mistaken identity up a stump in a dilemma when i got there it was all still and sunday-like and hot and sunshiney the hands was going to the fields and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful because you feel like it's spirits whispering spirits that's been dead ever so many years and you always think they're talking about you as a general thing it makes the body wish he was dead too and done with it all phelps's was one of those little one-horse cotton plantations and they all look alike a rail fence round or two acre yard a style made out of logs sought off and upended in steps like barrels of different lengths to climb over the fence with and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse some sickly grass patches in the big yard but mostly it was bare and smooth like an old hat with the nap rubbed off big double log house for the white folks huge logs with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar and these mud stripes been whitewashed some time or another round log kitchen with a big broad open but roofed passage joining it to the house log smokehouse back of the kitchen three little log nigger cabins in a row to the other side the smokehouse one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence and some outbuildings doubt a piece of the other side ash hopper and big kettle to buy all soap in by the little hut bench by the kitchen door with bucket of water and a gourd hound to sleep there in the sun more hounds to sleep around about about three shade trees away off in a corner some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch then the cotton fields begins and after the fields the woods i went around and clump over the back style of ash hopper and started for the kitchen when i got a little ways i heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again and then i knowed for certain i wished i was dead for that is the lonesome sound in the whole world i went right along and not fixing up any particular plan but trusting to providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come for i noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth if i left it alone when i got halfway first one hound and then another got up and went for me and of course i stopped and faced them and kept still and such another powwow was they made in a quarter of a minute i was kind of a hub of a wheel as you may say spokes made out of dogs circle a 15 of them packed together around me with their necks and noses stretched out toward me a barking and howling and more are coming you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywhere's a niggle woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand saying out be gone you teague you spot be gone soft and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling and then the rest followed and the next second half of them come back wagging their tails around me and making friends with me there ain't no harm in a hound no how and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys so without anything on but told and in shirts and they hung on to their mother's gown and peered out from behind her at me bashful the way they always do and here comes the white woman running from the house about 45 or 50 year old bareheaded and her spinning stick in her hand and behind her comes her little white children acting the same way the little niggers was doing she was smiling all over so she could hardly stand and says it's you at last ain't it i out with a yesam before i thought she grabbed me and hugged me tight and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook and the tears come in her eyes and run down over and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough and kept saying you don't look as much like your mother as i reckon you would but lost sake i don't care for that i'm so glad to see you dear dear it does seem like i could eat you up children it's your cousin tom tell him howdy but they ducked their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her so she run on lisa hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away or did you get your breakfast on the boat i said i had got it on the boat so then she started for the house leading me by the hand and the children tagging after when we got there she set me down in a split bottom chair and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me holding both of my hands and says now i can have a good look at you and laws of me i've been hungry for it a many and a many a time all these long years and it's come at last we've been expecting you a couple of days and more would kept you both get a ground yesam she don't say yesam say aunt sally where'd she get a ground i didn't rightly know what to say because i didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down but i go a good deal on instinct and my instinct said she would be coming up from down towards orleans that didn't help me much though for i didn't know the names of bars down that way i see i got to invent the bar or forget the name of the one we got a ground on or or now i struck an idea and fixed it out it weren't a grounding that didn't keep us back but a little we blowed out a cylinder good gracious anybody hurt know him kill the nigger well it's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt two years ago last christmas your uncle silas was coming up from darlene's on the old alley rook and she blowed out a cylinder head and crippled a man and i think he died afterwards he was a baptist your uncle silas know the family and baton ruse that knowed his people very well yes i remember now he did die mortification set in and they had to amputate him but it didn't save him yes it was mortification that was it he turned blue all over and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection they say he was a sight to look at your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you and he's gone again not more than an hour ago he'll be back any minute now you must have met him on the road didn't you oldest man with a no i didn't see nobody aunt sally the boat landed just a day light and i left my baggage on the worth boat and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country to put in the time and not get here too soon so i come down the back way who would you give the baggage to nobody why child it'll be stole not where i hid it i reckon it won't i says how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat it was kind of thin ice but i says the captain see me standing around and told me i better have something to eat before i went ashore so he took me in the texas to the office's lunch and give me all i wanted i was getting so uneasy i couldn't listen good i had my mind on the children all the time i wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little and find out who i was but i couldn't get no show mrs felps kept it up and run on so pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back because she says but here we are running on this way and you hate told me a word about sis nor any of them now i'll rest my words a little and you start up your and you just tell me everything tell me all about them all everyone of them and how they are and what they're doing and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of well i see i was up a stump and up it good providence had stood by me this for all right but i was hard and tight of ground now i see it weren't a bit of you to try to go ahead i got to throw up my hand so i says to myself here's another place where i got to risk the truth i opened my mouth to begin but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed and says here he comes stick your head down lower there that'll do you can't be seen now now you don't let on your here i'll play a joke on him children don't you say a word i see i was in a fix now but it weren't no use to worry there weren't nothing to do but just hold still and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck i had one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in then the bed hit me mrs felps she jumps for him and says has he come no says her husband goodness gracious she says what in the world can have become of him i can't imagine says the old gentleman and i must say it makes me dreadful uneasy uneasy she says i'm ready to go distracted he must come and you missed him along the road i know it's so something tells me so why sally i couldn't miss him along the road you know that but oh dear dear what will sissy he must come you must have missed him he oh don't distress me anymore and i'm already distressed i don't know what in the world to make of it i'm at my wits end and i don't mind acknowledging that i'm right down scared but there's no hope that he come for he couldn't come and be missing sally it's terrible just terrible something's happened to the boat sure why silence looking on the up the road ain't that somebody coming he sprung to the window at the head of the bed and that gave mrs felps the chance she wanted she stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull and out i come and when he turned back from the window there she stood a beam and a smiling like a house of fire and i was standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside the old gentleman stared and said why who's that who do you reckon is i ain't no idea who is it it's tom soya by jings i most slumped through the floor but there weren't no time to swap knives the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook and kept on shaking and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry and how they both did fire up questions about said and marry in the rest of the tribe but if they was joyful it weren't nothing to what i was for it was like being born again i was so glad to find out who i was well they froze to me for two hours and at last when my chin was so tired i couldn't hardly go anymore i told them more about my family i mean the soya family that ever happened to any six soya families and i explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of white river and it took us three days to fix it which was all right and worked first rate because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it if i'd have called it a bolt head it would have done just as well now i was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side and pretty uncomfortable all up the other being tom soya was easy and comfortable and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by i hear steamboat coughing along down the river then i says to myself suppose tom soya comes down on that boat and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before i can throw him a wink to keep quiet well i couldn't have it that way and it wouldn't do it all i must go up the road and weigh liam so i told the folks i reckoned i would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage the old gentleman was for going along with me but i said no i could drive the horse myself and i'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me end of chapter 32 chapter 33 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 33 a nigger stealer southern hospitality a pretty long blessing tar and feathers so i started for town in the wagon and when i was halfway i see a wagon coming and sure enough it was tom soya and i stopped and waited till he come along i says hold on and it stopped alongside and his mouth opened up like a trunk and stayed so and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat and then says i ain't never done you no harm you know that so then what do you want to come back and haunt me for i says i hate come back i ain't been gone when he heard my voice that righted him up some but he weren't quite satisfied yet he says don't you play nothing on me because i wouldn't on you honest engine now you ain't a ghost honest engine i ain't i says well i i well that ought to settle it of course but i can't somehow seem to understand it no way looky here weren't you ever murdered at all no i weren't ever murdered at all i played it on them you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me so he done it and it satisfied him and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do and he wanted to know all about it right off because it was a grand adventure and mysterious and so it hit him where he lived but i said leave it alone till by and by and told his driver to wait and we drove off a little piece and i told him the kind of fix i was in and what did he reckon we better do he said let him alone a minute and don't disturb him so he thought and thought and pretty soon he says it's all right i've got it take my trunk in your wagon and let on its urine and you turn back and fool along slow so as to get to the house about the time you ought to and i'll go towards town to peace and take a fresh start and get there a quarter or half an hour after you you need and let on you know me at first i says all right but wait a minute there's one more thing a thing that nobody don't know but me and that is there's a nigga here that i'm trying to steal out of slavery and his name is jim oh miss watson's jim he says what why jim is he stopped and went to study and i says i know what you say you say is a dirty lowdown business but what if it is i'm lowdown and i'm gonna steal him and i want you to keep mum and not let on will you his eyes lit up and he says i'll help you steal him well i'll let go all holds then like i wish i it was the most astonishing speech i ever heard and i'm bound to say tom sawyer felt considerable in my estimation only i couldn't believe it tom sawyer a nigger stealer oh shucks i says you're joking i ain't joking either well then i says joking or no joking if you hear anything sad about a runaway nigger don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him and i don't know nothing about him then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way and i drove mine but of course i forgot all about driving slow on accounts of being glad and full of thinking so i got home a heap too quick for that length of a trip the old gentleman was at the door and he says why this is wonderful whoever would have thought it was in that man to do it i wish we had time to and she ain't sweated a hair not a hair it's wonderful why i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now i wouldn't honest and yet i sold her for 15 before thought was all she was worth that's all he said he was the innocentest best old soul i ever see but it weren't surprising because he weren't only just a former he was a preacher too and had a little one horse log cabin down back at the plantation which he built it himself at his own expense for a church and schoolhouse and never charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too there was plenty of the former preachers like that and done the same way down south in about half an hour tom's wagon drove up to the front style and aunt sally she see it through the window because it's only about 50 yards and says why there's somebody come i wonder who it is why i do believe it's a stranger jimmy that's one of the children run and tell lies to put on another plate for supper everybody made a rush for the front door because of course a stranger don't come every year and so he lays over the yellow fever for interest when he does come tom was over the style and starting for the house the wagon was spinning up the road for the village and we was all bunched in the front door tom had his store clothes on and an audience and that was always nuts for tom saw him in them circumstances it weren't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable he warned a boy to meekly along up that yard like a sheep no he come calm and important like the ram when he got in front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them and says mr archibald nickels i presume know my boy says the old gentleman i'm sorry to say to your driver has deceived you nickels places down a matter of three mile more come in come in tom he took a look back over his shoulder and says too late he's out of sight yes he's going my son and you must come in and eat your dinner with us and then we'll hitch up and take you down to nickels oh i can't make you so much trouble i wouldn't think of it i walk i don't mind the distance but we won't let you walk it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it come right in oh do says ansally it ain't a bit of trouble to us not a bit in the world you must stay it's a long dusty three mile and we can't let you walk and besides i've already told him to put on another plate when i see you coming so you mustn't disappoint us come right in and make yourself at home so tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome and let himself be persuaded and come in and when he was in he said he was a stranger from hicksville ohio and his name was william thompson and he made another bow well he run on and on and on making up stuff about hicksville and everybody in it he could invent and i was getting a little nervous and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape and at last still talking he reached over and kissed ansally right on the mouth and didn't settle back in his chair comfortable and was going on talking but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her hand and says you audacious puppy he looked kind of hurt and says i'm surprised at you ma'am you're why what do you reckon i am i've got a good notion to take and say what do you mean by kissing me he looked kind of humble and says i didn't mean nothing ma'am i didn't mean no harm i i thought you'd like it why you born fool she took up the spinning stick and it looked like it was all she could do to keep him giving him a crack with it what made you think i'd like it well i don't know only they they told me you would they told you i would whoever told you use another lunatic i never heard the beat of it who's they why everybody they all said so ma'am it was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him and she says who's everybody out with their names or they'll be an idiot short he got up and looked distressed and fumbled his hat and says i'm sorry i weren't expecting it they told me to they all told me to they said kiss her and said she'd like it they all said it every one of them but i'm sorry ma'am and i won't do it no more i won't honest you won't won't you well i should reckon you won't know i'm honest about it i won't ever do it again until you ask me till i ask you well i never see the beat of it my born days i'll let you be the mothooze of the numb skull of creation before i ever ask you or the likes of you well he says it does surprise me so i can't make it out somehow they said you would and i thought you would but he stopped and looked around slow like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres and fetched up on the old gentleman says didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her sir why no i i well no i believe i didn't then he looks on around the same way to me and says tom didn't you think aunt sally'd open her arms and say sit sire my land she says breaking in and jumping for him you impudent young rascal to fool a body so and was going to hug him but he fended her off and says no not till you've asked me first she didn't lose no time but asked him and hugged him and kissed him over and over again and then turned him over to the old man and he took what was left and after they got a little quiet again she says oh my dear me i never see such a surprise we weren't looking for you at all but only tom sis never wrote to me about anybody coming with him it's because it weren't intended for any of us to come but tom he says but i begged and begged and at the last minute she let me come to so coming down the river me and tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first and for me to buy and buy a tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger but it was a mistake aunt sally this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come no not impudent welps said you ought to have your jaws boxed i ain't been so put out since i don't know when but i don't care i don't mind the terms i'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here well to think of that performance i don't deny it i was most putrefied with the stonest but when you gave me that smack we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and there was things enough on that table for seven families and all hot too none of you a flabby tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning uncle silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it but it was worth it and it didn't cool it a bit neither the way i'd seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon and me and tom was on the lookout all the time but it weren't no use they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger and we was afraid to try to work up to it but a supper at night one of the little boys says pa may it tom and sit and me go to the show no says the old man i reckon there ain't gonna be any and you couldn't go if there was because the runaway nigger told burton and me all about that scandalous show and burton said he would tell the people so i reckon they drove the audacious loaf was out of town before this time so there it was but i couldn't help it tom and me was to sleep in the same room in bed so being tired we did good night and went up to bed right after supper and come out of the window and down the lightning rod and shoved for the town for i didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and duke a hint and so if i didn't hurry up and give them one they get into trouble sure on the road tom he told me all about how it was reckoned i was murdered and how pap disappeared pretty quick and didn't come back no more and what a stir that was with jim runaway and i told tom all about our royal none such rap scallions and as much of the rap voyage as i had time to and as we struck into town and up through the middle of it it was as much as half after eight then here come a rage and rush of people with torches and an awful whooping and yelling and banging 10 pans and blowing horns and we jumped to one side and let them go by and as they went by i see they had the king and the duke a straddle of a rail that is i know it was the king and the duke though they was all over tar and feathers and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes well it made me sick to see it i was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals it didn't seem like i could never feel any hardness against them any more in the world it was a dreadful thing to see human beings can be awful cruel to one another we see we was too late couldn't do no good we asked some stragglers about it and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent and laid low and kept dark to the poor old king was in the middle of his covartons on the stage then somebody gave a signal and the house rose up and went for them so we poked along back home and i weren't feeling so brash as i was before but kind of ornery and humble and to blame somehow though i hadn't done nothing but that's always the way it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong a person's conscience ain't got no sense and just goes for him anyway if i had a yotter dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does i would poison him it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides and yet ain't no good know how time saw him he says the same end of chapter 33 chapter 34 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark quain this labor box recording is in the public domain chapter 34 the hut by the ash hopper outrageous climbing the lightning rod trouble with witches we stopped talking and got to thinking by and by tom says looky here huck what fools we are not to think of it before i bet i know where jim is no where in that hut down by the ash hopper by looky here when we was at dinner didn't you see a niggaman go in there with some vitals yes what did you think the vitals was for for a dog so did i well it wasn't for a dog why because part of it was watermelon so it was i noticed it well it does beat all that i never thought about a dog not eating watermelon it shows how a body can see and don't see at the same time well the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in and he locked it again when he came out he fetched uncle a key about the time we got up from table same key i bet watermelon shows man lock shows prisoner and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation and where the people's also kind and good jim's the prisoner all right i'm glad we found it out detective fashion i wouldn't give shucks for any other way now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal jim and i will study out one two and we'll take the one we like best what a head for just a boy to have if i had time saw his head i wouldn't trade it off to be a duke nor mate of a steamboat nor clown in a circus nor nothing i can think of i went to thinking out a plan but only just to be doing something i knowed very well where the right plan was going to come from pretty soon tom says ready yes i says all right bring it out my plan is this i says we can easily find out if it's jim in there then get up my canoe tomorrow night and fetch my raft over from the island then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's bridges after he goes to bed and shove off down the river on the raft with jim hiding day times and running nights the way me and jim used to do before wouldn't that plan work work why certainly it would work like rats are fighting but it's too blame simple there ain't nothing to it what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that it's as mild as goose milk why hook it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory i never said nothing because i weren't expecting nothing different but i knowed might well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it and it didn't he told me what it was and i see in a minute it was worth 15 a mine for style and would make jim just as free a man as mine would and maybe get us all killed besides so i was satisfied and said we would waltz in on it i needn't tell what it was here because i knowed it wouldn't stay the way it was i knowed he would be changing it around every which way as we went along and he even in new bullinesses whenever he got a chance and that is what he done well one thing was dead sure and that was that tom sawyer was in earnest and was actually gonna help steal that nigga out of slavery that was the thing that was too many for me he was a boy that was respectable and well-brung up and had a character to lose and folks at home that had characters and he was bright and not leatherheaded and knowing and not ignorant and not mean but kind and yet here he was without any more pride or rightness or feeling than a stoop to this business and make himself ashamed and his family ashamed before everybody i couldn't understand it no way at all it was outrageous and i knowed i ought to just up and tell him so and so be his true friend and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself and i did start to tell him but he shut me up and says don't you reckon i know what i'm about don't i generally know what i'm about yes didn't i say i was going to help steal the nigga yes well then that's all he said and that's all i said it weren't no use to say anymore because when he said he'd do a thing he always done it but i couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing so i just let it go and never bothered no more about it if he was bound to have it so i couldn't help it when we got home the house was all dark and still so we went on down to the hut by the ash hopper for to examine it we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do they knowed us and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides and on the side i weren't acquainted with which was the north side we found a square window hole up tolerable high with just one stout board nailed across it i says here's the ticket this hole's big enough for jim to get through if we wrench off the board tom says it's as simple as tic-tac-toe three in a row and as easy as playing hooky i should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that huck fin well then i says i hauled it due to saw him out the way i'd done before i was murdered that time that's more like he said it's real mysterious and troublesome and good he says but i bet we can find a way that's twice as long there ain't no hurry let's keep on looking around betwixt the hut and the fence on the back side was a lean to that joined the hut at the eaves and was made out of plank it was as long as the hut but narrow only about six foot wide the door to it was at the south end and was padlocked tom he went to the soap kettle and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with so he took it and prized out one of the staples the chain fell down and we opened the door and went in and shut it and struck a match and see the shed was only built against a cabin and had no connection with it and there weren't no floor to the shed nor nothing in it but some old rusty plate out hose and spades and picks and a cripple plow the match went out and so did we and shoved in the staple again and the door was locked as good as ever tom was joyful he says now we're all right we'll dig him out it'll take about a week then we started for the house and i went in the back door you only have to pull a buckskin lat strength they don't fasten the doors but that weren't romantic enough for tom sawyer no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning rod but after he got up halfway about three times and missed fire and fell every time and the last time most busted his brains out he thought he'd got to give it up but after he was rested he allowed he would give a one more turn for luck and this time he made the trip in the morning we was up at break a day and down to the nigger cabinets to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed jim if it was jim that was being fed the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields and jim's nigger was piling up a tin can with bread and meeting things and whilst the others was leaving he come from the house this nigger had a good nature chuckle-headed face and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread that was to keep the witches off he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights and making him see all kinds of strange things and hear all kinds of strange words and noises and he didn't believe he was ever wished so long before in his life he got so worked up and got to run it on so about his troubles he forgot all about what he'd been going to do so tom says who's the vitals for going to feed the dogs the nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face like when you heave a brick bat in the mud puddle and he says yes marr said a dog curious dog too does you want to go and look at him yes i hunched tom and whispered you going right in there in the daybreak that weren't the plan no it weren't but it's the plan now so drag him we went along but i didn't like it much when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything it was so dark but jim was there sure enough and could see us and he sings out why huck and goodland ain't that mr tom i just know how it would be i just expected it i didn't know nothing to do and if i had i couldn't have done it because that nigger busted in and says why the gracious sakes do he know you don't mean we could see pretty well now tom he looked at the nigger steady and kind of wonder and says does who know us why did see our wrong away nigger i don't reckon he does but what put that into your head what put it there didn't he just this minute sing out like he knows you tom says in a puzzled up kind of way well that's my curious who sung out when did he sing out why did he sing out and he turns to me perfectly calm and says did you hear anybody sing out of course there weren't nothing to be said but the one thing so i says no i ain't heard nobody say nothing then he turns to jim and looks him over like he never see him before and says did you sing out no sa says jim i ain't said nothing sa not a word no sa i ain't said a word did you ever see us before no sa not as i knows on so tom turns to the nigger which was looking wild and distressed and says kind of severe what do you reckon to the matter with you anyway what made you think somebody sung out oh it's the dad blame witches sa and i wished i was dead i do they's all is at it and they do most kill me they scares me so please don't tell nobody about sa oh more solace he'll scold me because he say there ain't no witches i just wish the goodness he was here now then what would he say i just bet he wouldn't find no way to get around it this time oh but it's all is just so people that's sought stay sought they won't look into nothing find it out for themselves and when you find it out and tell them about it they don't believe you tom give him a dime and said we wouldn't tell nobody and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his wool with and then he looks at jim and says i wonder if uncle solace is gonna hang this nigger if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away i wouldn't give him up i'd hang him and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good he whispers to jim and says don't ever let on to know us and if you hear any digging going on nights it's us we're going to set you free jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it then the nigger come back and we said we'd come again sometime if the nigger wanted us to and he said he would most particularly if it was dark because the witches went for him mostly in the dark and it was good to have folks around then into chapter 34 chapter 35 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this libre vox recording is in the public domain chapter 35 escaping properly dark schemes discrimination in stealing a deep hole it would be most in our yet till breakfast so we left and struck down into the woods because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by and lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox fire and just makes a soft kind of glow when you lay them in a dark place we fixed an armful and hit it in the weeds and sat down at the rest and tom says 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 they ain't no watchman to be drugged now they're ought to be a watchman they ain't even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to and there's jim chained by one leg with a 10 foot chain to the leg of his bed why all you got to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain and uncle silas he trusts everybody sends the key to the pumpkin headed nigger and don't send nobody to watch the nigger jim would have got out of that window hole before this only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with the 10 foot chain on his leg why drat it hook it's the stupidest arrangement i ever seen you got to invent all the difficulties well well we can't help it we got to do the best we can with the materials we got anyhow there's one thing there's more honor and getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers when there weren't one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them and you got to contrive them all out of your own head now look at just that one thing of the lantern when you come down to the cofax we simply got to let on that a lantern's risky while we could work with a torch like procession if we wanted to i believe now whilst i think of it we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get what do we want of a saw what do we want of it hey we got the saw the leg of jim's bed off so as to get the chain loose why you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off well if that ain't just like you hook finn you can get up the infant schooliest ways of going at a thing why ain't you ever read any books at all baron track nor castanova nor ben venuto chilini nor henry the fourth none of them heroes who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old matey way as that no the way all best authorities does is to saw the bed leg and two and leave it just so and swallow the solder so it can't be found and put some dirt and grease around the sod place of the very keenest cynical can't see no sign of it's being sawed i think the bed leg is perfectly sound and then the night you're ready fetch the leg a kick down she goes slip off your chain and there you are nothing to do but hit your rope ladder to the battlements shin down it break your leg in the moat because a rope ladder is 19 foot too short you know and there's your horses and your trusty vassals and they scoop you up and fling you across the saddle and away you go to your native leg dock or navar or whatever it is it's gaudy hook i wish there was a moat to this cabin if we get time tonight of the escape we'll dig one i says what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin but he never heard me he had forgotten me and everything else he had his chin in his hand thinking pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head then sighs again and says ah no it wouldn't do there ain't necessity enough for it for what i says why to saw jim's leg off he says good land i says why there ain't no necessity for it what would you want to saw his leg off for anyway well some of the best authorities has done it they couldn't get the chain off so they just cut their hand off and shoved and the leg would be better still but we got to let that go there ain't necessity enough in this case and besides jim's a nigger and 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 easy enough and we can send it to him in a pie it's mostly done that way and i bet we're spies what tom saw how you talk i says jim may got no use for a rope ladder he has got used for it how you talk you better say you don't know nothing about it he's got to have a rope ladder they all do what in the nation 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's got to do 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 don't do nothing with it ain'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 to do wouldn't it i never heard of such a thing well i says if it's in the regulations and he's got to have it all right let him have it because i don't wish to go back on no regulations but there's one thing tom saw if we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope ladder we're gonna get into trouble with aunt sally just as sure as you're born now the way i look at it a hickory bark ladder don't cost nothing and don't waste nothing and it's 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 ain't had no experience and so he don't care what kind of a oh shucks huck finn if i was as ignorant as you i'd keep still that's what i'd do whoever 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 says borrow a shirt too what do we want of a shirt tom 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 eat if we make him a pin 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 dungeon keep to pull pins out of you muggins they always makes their pins out of the hardest toughest troublesomeest piece of old brass candle sticker or something like that 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've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall they wouldn't use a goose quill if they had it it ain't regular well then what do we make him the ink out of many makes it out of iron rust and tears but that's the common sort and 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 done that and it's a blame good way too jim ain't got no tin plates they feed him in a pan that ain't nothing we can get him some can't nobody read his plates that ain't got anything to do with it hook fin all he's got to do is to 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 it ain't the prisoners plates but it's somebody's plates ain't it well supposing it is what does the prisoner care who's he broke off there because we heard the breakfast horn blowing so we cleared out for the house along during the morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothesline and i found an old sack and put them in it and we went down and got the fox fire and put that into i called it borrowing because that's what pap always called it but tom said it weren't borrowing it was stealing he said we was representing prisoners and the prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it and nobody don't blame them for it either it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with tom said it's his right and so so long as we was representing a prisoner we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place 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 would have mean or an ordinary person would steal when he weren't a prisoner so we allowed we would steal everything that was that come handy and yet he made a modifus one day after that when i stole the watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for tom said that what he meant was we could steal anything we needed well i says i needed the watermelon but he says i didn't need it to get out of prison with that's where the difference was he said if i wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to jim to kill the cynical with it would have been all right so i'll let it go with that though i couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if i got to sit down and chop over a lot of gold leave distinctions like that every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon well as i was saying we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business and nobody inside around the yard then tom he carried the sack into the lean to whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch by and by he come out and we went and sat down on the wood pile to talk he says everything's all right now except tools and that's easy fixed tools i says yes tools for what why to dig with we ain't gonna gnaw him out are we ain't them old crippled pigs and things in there good enough to dig a dig out with i says he turns on me looking pitying enough to make a body cry and says huck thin 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 got any reasonableness in you at all what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero why they might as well lend him the key and done with it picks and shovels why they wouldn't furnish him to a king well then i says 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 the cabin with yes confounded it's foolish time it don't make no difference how foolish it is it's the right way and it's the regular way and there ain't no other way that ever i heard of and i've read all the books that gives 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 you look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deep in the harbor of marcellus that dug himself out that way how long was he at it you reckon i don't know well guess i don't know a month and a half thirty seven year and he come out in china that's the kind i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock jim don't know nobody in china what's that got to do with it neither did that other fella but you're always wondering off on a side issue why can't you stick to the main point all right i don't care where he comes out so he comes out and jim don't either i reckon but there's one thing anyway jim is too old to be dug out with a case knife he won't last yes he will last two you don't reckon it's going to take 37 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 take very long for uncle silas to hear from down there by new allens he'll hear jim ain'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 be a couple of years but we can't things being so uncertain what i recommend is this that we really dig right in as quick as we can and after that we can let on to ourselves that we was at it 37 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 are sense in that i says letting on don't cost nothing letting on ain't no trouble and if it's any object i don't mind letting on we was at it 150 years it wouldn't strain me none after i got my hand in so i'm mosey along now and smooch a couple of case knives smooch three he says we want one to make a saw out of tom if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it i says there's an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weather board and behind the smokehouse he looked kind of weary and discouraged like and says it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing huck run along and smooch the knives three of them so i've done it it into chapter 35 chapter 36 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this laborie box recording is in the public domain chapter 36 the lightning rod his level best a bequest to posterity a high figure as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean to and got out our pile of fox fire and went to work we cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log tom said he was right behind jim's bed now and we dig in under it and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole so we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight and then we was dog tired and our hands was blistered and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly at last i says this ain't no 37 year job this is a 38 year job tom saw her he never said nothing but he sighed and pretty soon he stopped digging and then for a good little while i know that he was thinking then he says it ain't no use huck it ain't a going to work if we was prisoners it would because then we'd have as many years as we wanted in no hurry and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while they was changing watches and so our hands wouldn't get blistered and we could keep it up right along year in and year out and do it right and the way it ought to be done but we can't fool along we got to rush we ain't got no time to spare if we was to put in another knot this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well we couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner well then what we're going to do tom i'll tell you it ain't right and it ain't moral and i wouldn't like it to get out but there ain't only just the one way we got to dig him out with the picks and let on its case knives now you're talking i says your head gets a leveler and leveler all the time tom soil i says picks is a thing moral or no moral and as for me i don't care shucks for the morality of it know how when i start into stealing nigger or a watermelon or a sunday school book i ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done what i want is my nigger or what i want is my watermelon or what i want is my sunday school book and if it picks the handiest thing that's the thing i'm going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday school book out with and i don't give our dead rat what the authorities thinks about it another well he says there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this if it weren't so i wouldn't approve of it nor wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke because right is right and wrong is wrong and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant knows better it might answer for you to dig Jim out with the pick without any letting on because you don't know no better but it wouldn't for me because i do know better gimme a case knife he had his own but i handed him mine and he flung it down and says gimme a case knife i didn't know just what to do but then i thought i scratched around amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him and he took it and went to work and never said a word he was always just that particular full of principle so then i got a shovel and then we picked and shoveled turnabout and made the fur fly we stuck it about half an hour which was as long as we could stand it but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it when i got upstairs i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with the lightning rod but he couldn't come at his hand was so sore at last he says it ain't no use it can't be done what do you reckon i better do can't you think of no way yes i says but i reckon it ain't regular come up to staz and let on it's a lightning rod so he done it next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house for to make some pins for a gym out of and six tallow candles and i hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance and stole three ten plates tom says it wasn't enough but i said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that jim thrown out because they'd fall in the dog fennel and jimson weeds under the window hole then we could tote them back and he could use them over again so tom was satisfied then he says now the thing to study out is how to get the things to jim take them in through the hole i says when we get it done he only just looked scornful and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea and then he went to study and by and by he said he had suffered out two or three ways but there weren't no use to decide on any of them yet said we got to post jim first that night we went down the lightning rod a little after ten and took one of the candles along and listened under the window hole and heard jim snoring so we pitched it in and it didn't wake him then we whirled in with the pick and shovel and in about two hours and a half the job was done we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin and part around and found the candle and lit it and stood over jim a while and found him looking hearty and healthy and then we woke him up gentle and gradual he was so glad to see us he most cried and called us honey and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away and clearing out without losing any time but tom he showed him how unregular it would be and sat down and told him all about our plans and how we could alter them in a minute anytime there was an alarm and not to be the least afraid because we would see he got away sure so jim said it was all right and we sat there and talked over old times a while and then tom asked a lot of questions and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him and had sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat and both of them was kind as they could be tom says now i know how to fix it we'll send you some things by them i said don't do nothing other kind it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck but he never paid no attention to me went right on it was his way when he got his plan set so i told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope ladder pie and other large things by nat the nigger that fed him and he must be on the lookout and not be surprised and not let nat see him open them and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out and we would tie things to aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance and told him what there would be and what there was for and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood and all that he told him everything jim couldn't see no sense in the most of it but he allowed we was white folks and know better than him so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as tom said jim had plenty corn cob pipes and tobacco so we had a right down good sociable time then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed with hands that looked like they'd been charred tom was in high spirits he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it he said that in that way you could be strung out to as much as 80 year and would be the best time on record and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it in the morning we went out to the wood pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket then we went to the nigger cabins and while i got nat's notice off tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a cornpone that was in jim's pan and we went along with nat to see how it would work and it just worked noble when jim bit into it most mashed all his teeth out and there weren't ever anything could have worked better tom said so himself jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread you know but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first and whilst we was standing there in the dimmish light here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under jim's bed and they kept on piling until there was eleven of them and there weren't hardly room in there to get your breath by james we forgot to fasten that lean two door the nigger nat he only just hollered witches once and keeled over on the floor amongst the dogs and began to groan like he was dying tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat and the dogs went for it and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door and i know he'd fixed the other door too then he went to work on the nigger coaxing him and petting him and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again he raised up and blinked his eyes around and says maw said you say's i's a fool but if i didn't believe i see most a million dogs or devils or something i wish i may die right here in these tracks i did most surely maw said i felt them i felt them saw they was all over me dang fetch it i just wish i could get my hands on one of them witches just once only just once it's all i asked but mostly i wish they'd leave me alone i does tom says well i'll tell you what i think what makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast time it's because they're hungry that's the reason you make them a witch pie that's the thing for you to do but my land maw said how's i going to make them a witch pie i don't know how to make it i ain't ever heard of such a thing before well then i'll have to make it myself will you do it honey will you i worship the ground under your foot i will all right i'll do it seeing it's you and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger but you got to be mighty careful when we come around you turn your back and then whatever we put in the pan don't you let on you see it at all and don't you look when jim unloads the pan something might happen i don't know what and above all don't you handle the witch things handle maw said what is you talking about i wouldn't lay the weight of a thing on them not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars i wouldn't end of chapter 36 chapter 37 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain list libre vox recording is in the public domain chapter 37 the last shirt mooning around sailing orders the witch pie that was all fixed so then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard where they keep the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles and wore our ten things and all such truck and scratched around and found an old ten wash pan and stopped up the holes as well as we could to bake the pie in and took it down cella and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast and found a couple of shingle nails that tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with and dropped one of them in aunt sally's apen pocket which was hanging on a chair and tether we stuck in the band of uncle silas's hat which was on the bureau because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway niggers house this morning and then went to breakfast and tom dropped the pewter spoon in uncle silas's coat pocket and aunt sally wasn't come yet so we had to wait a little while and when she come she was hot and red and cross and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing and then she went to sluice and out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child's head with the thimble with the other and says i'll hunt it high and i'll hunt it low and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt my heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm and let a cry out of him the size of a war hoop and tom he turned kind of blue around the gills and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that and i would have sold out for half a price if there was a bitter but after that we was all right again it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold he says it's most uncommon curious i can't understand it i know perfectly well i took it off because because you ain't got but one on now listen to the man i know you took it off and know it by a better way than you'll will gather in memory too because it was on the clothes line yesterday i see it there myself but it's gone that's the long and the short of it and you'll just have to change to a red flannel one till i can get time to make a new one and it'll be the third i've made in two years i just keeps the body on the jump to keep you in shirts whatever you managed to do with them all is more than i can make out a body you think you would learn to take some sort of care of them at your time of life i know it's ali and i do try all i can but it ought to be all together my fault because you know i don't see them no i have nothing to do with them except when they're on me and i don't believe i've ever lost one of them off of me well it ain't your fault if you haven't silas you'd have done it if you could i reckon and the shirt ain't all that's gone another there's a spoon gone and that ain't all there was ten and now there's only nine the calf got the shirt i reckon but the calf never took the spoon that's certain why what else is going sally there's six candles gone that's what the rats could have got the candles i reckon they did i wonder they don't walk off with the whole place the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it and if they weren't fools they'd sleep in your hair silas you never find it out but you can't lay the spoon on the rats in that i know well sally i'm in fault and i acknowledge it i've been remiss but i won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes oh i wouldn't hurry next year or two matilda angelina areamenta fulps whack came the thimble and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar bowl without fooling around any just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage and says mrs there's a sheet gone a sheet gone well for land sake i'll stop up them holes today says uncle salas looking sorrowful oh do shut up suppose the rats took the sheet where's it's gone liza clad of goodness i hate no notion miss sally she was on the clothesline yesterday but she done gone she ain't there no more now i reckon the world is coming to an end i never see the beat of it in all my born days a shirt and a sheet and a spoon and six can't miss us comes a young yaller wench there's a brass candlestick missing clear out of here you hussy or i'll take a skillet to you well she was just a violin i began to lay for a chance i reckon i would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated she kept a raging right along running her insurrection all by herself and everybody else mind a meek and quiet and at last uncle salas looking kind of foolish fishes up that spoon out of his pocket she stopped with her mouth open and her hands up and asked for me i wished i was in jerusalem or somewhere else but not long because she says it's just as i expected so you had it in your pocket all the time and like it's not you got the other things there too how to get there i really don't know sally he says kind of apologizing or you know i would tell i was a study and over my text in act 17 before breakfast and i reckon i put it in there not noticing meaning to put my testament in and it must be so because my testament ain't in but i'll go and see and if the testament is where i had it i'll know i didn't put it in and that will show that i laid the testament down and took up the spoon and oh for the land's sake give a body a rest go along now the whole kitten body of you and don't come nine to me again till i've got back my peace of mind i'd have heard her if she said it to herself let alone speaking it out and i'd have got up and obeyed her if i'd have been dead as we was passing through the setting room the old man he took up his hat and the shingle nail fell out on the floor and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the male shelf and never said nothing and went out tom see him do it and remembered about the spoon and says well it ain't no use to send things by him no more he ain't reliable then he says but he done us a good turn with the spoon anyway without knowing it and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it stop up his rat holes there was a noble good lot of them down cellar and it took us a whole hour but we done the job tied and good and ship shape then we heard steps on the stairs and blowed out our light and hid and here comes the old man with the candle in one hand and the bundle of stuff and tether looking as absent minded as year before last he went a moon and around first to one rat hole and then another till he'd been to them all then he stood about five minutes picking tallow drip off his candle and thinking then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs saying well for the life of me i can't remember when i'd done it i could show her now that i weren't to blame on account of the rats but never mind let it go i reckon it wouldn't do no good and so he went on a mumbling upstairs and then we left he was a mighty nice old man and always is tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon but he said we got to have it so he took a thing when he had siphoted out he told me how we was to do it then we went and waited around the spoon basket till we see Aunt Sally coming and then tom went to counten the spoons and laying them out to one side and i slid one of them up my sleeve and tom says why ain't Sally there ain't but nine spoons yet she says go along to your play and don't bother me i know better i counted them myself well i've counted them twice and i can't make but nine she looked all out of patience but of course she couldn't count anybody would i declared the gracious there ain't but nine she says why what in the world plague take the things i'll count them again so i slipped back the one i had when she got done counting she says hang the troublesome rubbish there's ten now and she looked huffy and bothered both but tom says why auntie i don't think there's ten you numbskull didn't you see me count them i know but well i'll count them again so i smooched one and they come out nine same as the other time well she was in a tearing way just a trembling all over she was so mad but she counted and counted till she got that addled she started to count in the basket for a spoon sometimes and so three times they come out right and three times they come out wrong then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley west and she said clear out and let her have some peace and if we come bothering around her again but twix that and dinner she'd skin us so we had the odd spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket while she was giving us our seal and orders and jim got it all right along with her shingle nail before noon we was very well satisfied with this business and tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did and said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them anymore so we put the sheet back on the line that night and stole one out of a closet and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of days till she didn't know how many sheets she had anymore and she didn't care and weren't a going to bully rag the rest of her soul out about it and wouldn't count them again not to save her life she'd rather die first so we was all right now as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed up counting and as to the candlestick it weren't no consequence it would blow over by and by but that pie was a job we had no way to trouble with that pie we fixed it up a way down in the woods and cooked it there and we got it done at last and very satisfactory too but not all in one day and we had to use up three wash pans full of flour before we got through and we got burnt pretty much all over in places and eyes put out with the smoke because you see we didn't want nothing but a crust and we couldn't prop it up right and she would always cave in but of course we thought of the right way at last which was to cook the latter two in the pie so then we laid in with Jim the second night and tore up the sheet all in little strings and twisted them together and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could have hung a person with we let on it took nine months to make it and in the forenoon we took it down to the woods but it wouldn't go into the pie being made of a whole sheet that way there was rope enough for 40 pies if we don't one of them and plenty left over for soup or sausage or anything you choose we could have had a whole dinner but we didn't need it all we needed was just enough for the pie and so we throw the rest away we didn't cook none of the pies in the wash pan afraid the solder would melt but Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of because it belonged to one of his ancestors with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower all one of them early ships and was hit away up Garrett with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable not on account of being any account because they weren't on account of them being relics you know and we snaked her out private and took her down there but she failed on the first pies because we didn't know how but she come up smiling on the last one we took in line hope with dough and set her in the coals and loaded her up with rag rope and put on a dough roof and shut down the lid and put hot embers on top and stood off five foot with the long handle cool and comfortable and in 15 minutes she turned out a pie that was satisfaction to look at but the person that edit would want to fetch a couple of cags of toothpicks along for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about and lay him in enough stomach aid to last him till next time to not didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vitals and so Jim got everything all right and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie and hit the rope ladder inside his straw tick and as scratch some marks on a tin plate and throw it out of the window hole end of chapter 37 chapter 38 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery box recording is in the public domain chapter 38 the coat of arms a skilled superintendent unpleasant glory a tearful subject making them pins was a distressed tough job and so was the saw and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all that's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall but he had to have it tom said he'd got to there weren't no case of a state prisoner not scrabble in his inscription to leave behind and his coat of arms look at lady jane gray he says look at gilford dunley look at old northumberland why hook suppose it is considerable trouble what you're going to do are you going to get around it jam's got to do his inscription and coat of arms they all do jim says why morse tom i ain't got no coat of harm i ain't got nothing but this whole shirt and you knows i got to keep the journal on that oh you don't understand jim a coat of arms is very different well i says jim's right anyway when he says he ain't got no coat of arms because he ain't i reckon i know that tom says but you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this because he's going out right and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record so whilst me and jim filed away at the pins on a brick pad of peace jim by making his hand out of the brass and i'm making mine out of the spoon tom said to work to think out the coat of arms by and by he says he struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take but there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on he says on the escutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base a salt air Murray in the fests with the dog kuchant for common charge and under his foot a chain embattled for slavery with the chevron vert in a chief engrailed and three invected lines on a field as sure with the mom braille points rampant on a dance set invented crest a runaway nigger sable with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister and a couple of gules for supporters which is you and me motto my g r a fretta minor r a auto got it out of a book means the more haste the less speed gee well again says but what does the rest of it mean we ain't got no time to bother over that he says we got to dig in like all get out well anyway i says what's some of it what's a fess a fess a fess is you don't need to know what a fess is i'll show you how to make it when he gets to it shucks tom i says i think you might tell a person what's a bar sinister oh i don't know but he's got to have it all the nobility does was that was just his way if it didn't suit him to explain the thing to you he wouldn't do it you might pump it him a week and it wouldn't make no difference he got all that coat of arms business fixed so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work which was to plan out a mournful inscription said jim got to have one like they all done he made up a lot and wrote them out on a paper and read them off so one here a captive heart busted two here a poor prisoner four sucked by the world and friends fredded his sorrowful life three he a lonely heart broke and a worn spirit went to its rest after 37 years of solitary captivity four here homeless and friendless after 37 years of bitter captivity perished a noble stranger natural son of lewis xiv tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them and he most broke down when he got done he wouldn't no way make up his mind which one for jim to scrabble onto the wall that was all so good but at last he allowed he would let him scrabble him all on jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck onto the logs with a nail and he didn't know how to make letters besides but tom said he would block them out for him and that he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines then put it soon he says come to think the logs ain't going to do they don't have log walls in a dungeon we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock we'll fetch a rock jim said the rock was worse than the logs he said it would take him such a pys and long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out but tom said he would let me help him do it then he took a look to see how me and jim was getting along with the pins it was most pesky tedious hard work and slow and didn't give my hands no show to get with all of the saws and we didn't seem to make no headway hardly so tom says i know how to fix it we got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions and we can just kill two birds with that same rock there's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill and we'll smooch it and carve things on it and file out the pins and the saw on it too it weren't no slouch of an idea and it weren't no slouch of a grindstone mother but we allowed we tackle it it weren't quite midnight yet so we cleared out for the mill leaving jim at work we smooched the grindstone and set out to roll her home but it was a most nation tough job sometimes do what we could we couldn't keep her from falling over and she come mind and air mashing us every time tom said she was going to get one of us sure before we got through we got her halfway and then we was plumb played out and most drowned with sweat we see it warrant no use we got to go and fetch jim so we raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed leg and wrapped it round and round his neck and we crawled out through our hole and down there and jim and me laid that grindstone and walked her along like nothing and tom super intended he could out super intend any boy i ever see he knows how to do everything a hole was pretty big but it weren't big enough to get the grindstone through but jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough then tom marked out them things on it with a nail and set jim to work on them with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbish in the lean to for a hammer and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him and then he could go to bed and hide the grindstone under his straw tick and sleep on it then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed leg and was ready for bed ourselves but tom thought of something and says you got any spiders in here jim no sir thanks to goodness i hate morse tom all right we'll get you some but bless you honey i don't want none i's a fear of them i just assume have rattlesnakes around tom thought a minute or two and says it's a good idea and i reckon it's been done it must have been done it stands to reason yes it's a prime good idea where would you keep it keep what morse tom why a rattlesnake and the goodness gracious alive morse tom why if there was a rattlesnake to come in here i take a bus right out to that long wall i would with my head why jim you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little you could tame it tame it yes easy enough every animal is grateful for kindness and petting and they wouldn't think of hurting the person that pets them any book will tell you that you try that's all i ask just try for two or three days why you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you and sleep with you and won't stay away from you a minute and we'll let you wrap him around your neck and put his head in your mouth please morse tom don't talk so i can't stand it he'd let me shove my head in his mouth for a favor ain't it i lay here with a powerful long time for i asked him and more than i don't want him to sleep with me jim don't act so foolish a person has got to have some kind of a dumb pet and if a rattlesnake ain't ever been tried while there's more glory to be gained than you'll be in the first to ever try than any other way you could ever think of to save your life why morse tom i don't want no such a glory snake taken by jim's chin off then wears the glory no suh i don't want no such doings blame it can't you try i only want you to try you needn't keep it up if it don't work but the trouble all done if the snake bite me while i try and hit morse tom i was willing to tackle most anything that ain't unreasonable but if you and huck fetches the rattlesnake in here for me the team i was going to leave that short well then let it go let it go if you're so bullheaded about it we can get you some garter snakes and you can tie some buttons on their tails and let on their rattlesnakes and i reckon that'll have to do i can stand in morse tom but blame if i couldn't get along without them i'll tell you that i never know before it was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner well it always is when it's done right you got any rats around here no suh i ain't see none well we'll get you some rats while morse tom i don't want no rats dace the dad blame his creatures to stir the body and rustle around over him and bite his feet when he's trying to sleep i ever see no suh give me garter snakes if i's got to have them but don't give me no rats i ain't got no use for them scarcely but jim you got to have them they all do so don't make no more fuss about it prisoners ain't ever without rats there ain't no instance of it and they train them and pet them and learn them tricks and they get to be as sociable as flies but you got to play music to them you got anything to play music on i ain't got nothing but a coarse comb and a piece of paper and a juice hop but i reckon they wouldn't take no stopping a juice harp yes they would they don't care what kind of music tis a juice hop's plenty good enough for a rat all animals like music in a prison they don't on it especially painful music and you can't get no other kind out of a juice hop it always interests them they come out to see what's the matter with you yes you're all right you're fixed very well you want to sit on your bed nights before you go to sleep and early in the mornings and play your juice harp play the last link is broken that's the thing that will scoop a rat quicker than anything else and when you played about two minutes you see all the rats and the snakes and spiders and things began to feel worried about you and come and they'll just fairly swarm over you and have a noble good time yes day will i reckon more time but what kind of time is jim having blessed if i can see the pint but i'll do it if i got to i reckon i better keep the animal satisfied and not have no trouble in the house tom waited to think it over and see if there wasn't nothing else and pretty soon he says oh there's one thing i forgot could you raise a flower here do you reckon i don't know but maybe i could mars time but it's tolerable dark in here and i ain't got no use for no flower know how and she'd be a powerful side of trouble well try it anyway some other prisoners has done it one of them big cattail looking mullin stalks would grow in here mars time i reckon but she wouldn't be worth half the trouble she costs don't you believe it we'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there and raise it and don't call it mullin call it pitchy ola that's his right name when it's in a prison and you want to water it with your tears why i got plenty spring water mars time you don't want spring water you want to water it with your tears it's the way they always do why mars time i can raise one of them mutton stalks twice with spring water while another man's starting one with tears that ain't the idea you got to do it with tears she'll die on my hands mars time she surely will because i don't scarcely ever cry so tom was stumped but he studied it over and then said jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion he promised he'd go to the nigger cabins and drop one private in jim's coffee pot in the morning jim said he would just as soon have tobacco in his coffee and found so much fall with it and with the work and bother a raise in the mullin and jewish harp and the rats and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things on top of all the other work he had to do on pens and inscriptions and journals and things which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook that tom most lost all patience with him and said he was just loaded down with more guardian chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them and they was just about wasted on him so jim he was sorry and said he wouldn't behave so no more than being tom shoved off a bed end of chapter 38 chapter 39 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 39 rats lively bedfellows the straw dummy in the morning we went up to the village and brought a wire rat trap and fetched it down and unstopped the best rat hole and in about an hour we had 15 of the bulliest kind of ones and then we took it and put it in a safe place under aunt sally's bed but while we was going for spiders little thomas franklin benjamin jefferson elixander felps found it there and opened the door up to see if the rats would come out and they did and aunt sally she come in and when we got back she was standing on top of the bed raising cane and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her so she took and dusted us both with the hickory and we was as much as two hours catching another 15 or 16 draft that metal some cub and they weren't the likeliest another because the first hall was the pick of the flock i never see a likely a lot of rats but and what that first hall was we got a splendid stock of sorted spiders and bugs and frogs and caterpillars and one thing or another and we like to get a hornet's nest but we didn't the family was at home we didn't give it right up but stayed with them as long as we could because we allowed we tire them out or they tire us out and they done it then we got alley campaign and rubbed on the places and it was pretty near all right again but couldn't set down convenient and so we went for the snakes and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house snakes and put them in a bag and put it in our room and by that time it was supper time and a rattling good honest day's work and hungry oh no i reckon not and there weren't a blessed snake up there when we went back we didn't have tied the sack and they worked out somehow and left but it didn't matter much because they was still on the premises somewhere so we judged we could get some of them again no there weren't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell you'd see them dripping from the rafters in places every now and then and they generally landed in your platter down the back of your neck and most of the time where you didn't want them well they was handsome and striped and there weren't no harm in a million of them but that never made no difference to aunt sally she despised snakes be the breed what they might and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it and every time one of them flopped down on her it didn't make no difference what she was doing she would just lay that work down and light out i never see such a woman and you could hear her whooped jericho you wouldn't get her to take a 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 a fire she disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there had never been no snakes created well after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week and sally weren't over it yet she weren't near 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 was just so he said they was made that way for some reason or other we got a licking every time one of our snakes coming her way and she allowed these licking's warring nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them i didn't mind the licking's because they didn't amount to nothing but i'm minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot but we got them laid in and all the other things and you never see a cabinist blossom as jim's was when they'd all swarm off the music and go for him jim didn't like the spiders and the spiders didn't like jim and so they'd lay for him and make it mind and warm for him and he said that between the rats and the snakes in the grindstone there weren't no room in bed for him scarcely and when there was a body couldn't sleep it was so lively and it was always lively he said because they never all slept at one time but took turn about so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch so he always had one gang under him in his way or another 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 wouldn't ever 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 whilst the ink was fresh the pens was made the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone the bed leg was sought in too and we had ed up the sawdust and they give us a most amazing stomach ache we reckoned we was all going to die but didn't it was the most undigestible sawdust i ever see and tom said the same but as i was saying we'd all got the work done now at last and we was all pretty much fagged out too but mainly jim the old man had rode a couple of times to the plantation below our leans to come and get their runaway nigger but hadn't got no answer because there weren't no such plantation so he allowed he would advertise jim in the st louis and new allans papers and when he mentioned the st louis ones it gave me the cold shivers and i see we had no time to lose so tom said now for the unanimous lettuce what's them i says warnings to the people that something is up sometimes it's done one way sometimes another but there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle when louis the 60th was going to light out of the tularees a serving girl done it it's a very good way and so is the unanimous lettuce we'll use them both and it's usual for the president's mother to change clothes with him and she stays in and he slides out in her clothes we'll do that too but looky here tom what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up let them find 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 confided and muddied headed they don't take notice of nothing at all so if we don't give them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape will go off perfectly flat won't amount to nothing won't be nothing to it well as for me tom that's the way i'd like shocks he says and looks disgusted so i says but i ain't gonna make no complaint anyway that suits you suits me what are you going to do about the serving girl you'll be her you slide in in the middle of the night and hook that yellow girl's frock why tom that'll make trouble next morning because of course she probably ain't got any but that one i know but you don't want it but 15 minutes to carry the unanimous 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 talks you wouldn't look like a servant girl then would you no but there won't be nobody to see what i look like anyway that ain't got nothing 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 ain't you got no principle at all all right i ain't saying nothing 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 me and jim leaves 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 nigger woman's gown off of me and wear it and we'll all evade together when a prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion it's always so when a king escapes for instance and the same with a king's son it don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one so tom wrote the unanimous letter and i smooched the outer winches frock that night and put it on and shoved it under the front door the way tom told me to it said beware trouble is brewing keep a sharp look out unknown friend next night we stuck a picture which tom drawed in blood of a scald and crossbones on the front door and next night another one of a coffin on the back door i never see a family in such a sweat they couldn't have been worse scared if the place had been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air if a door banged and sally she jumped and said ouch if anything fell she jumped and said ouch if you happen to touch her when she weren't noticing she'd done the same she couldn't face no way and be satisfied because she allowed there was something behind her every time so she was always a whirling around sudden and saying ouch and before she got two thirds around she'd whirl back again and say it again and she was afraid to go to bed but she dashed and set up so the thing was working very well tom said he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory 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 was wondering what we better do with it because we heard them say it's supper they was going to have a nigger and watch it both doors all night tom he went down the lightning rod to spy around and the nigger at the back door was asleep so he stuck it in the back of his neck and came back the letter said don't betray me i wish to be your friend there is a desperate gang to cut throats from over in the indian territory going to steal your runaway nigger tonight and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them i am one of the gang but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again and will betray the hellish design they will sneak down from the norther it's along the fence at midnight exact with the false key and go in the niggers cabin to get him i am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if i see any danger but instead of that i will buy like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow it all thence while so they are getting his chains loose you slip there and lock them in and can kill them at your leisure don't do anything but just the way i am telling you if you do they will suspicion something and raise hoop jamboree who i do not wish any reward but to know i have done the right thing unknown friend end of chapter 39 chapter 40 of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this livery vox recording is in the public domain chapter 40 fishing the vigilance committee a lively run jim advises a doctor we was feeling pretty good after breakfast and took my canoe and went over the river of 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 and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they were standing on and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was and never let on a word about the new letter but didn't need to because we know as much about it as anybody did and soon as we was half upstairs and her back was turned we slid further sell our cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed and got up about half past 11 and tom put on aunt sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch but says where's the butter i laid out a hunk of it i says on a piece of cornpone well you left it laid out then it ain't here we can get along without it i says we can get along with it too he says just you slide down seller and fetch it and then mows you 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 buy like a sheep and shove as soon as you get there so he went out and down seller 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 cornpone with it on and blowed out my light and started upstairs very stealthy and got up to the main floor all right but here comes aunt sally with a candle and i clapped the truck in my hat and clapped my hat on my head and the next set she see me and she says you been down seller yes i'm what you've been doing down there nothing nothing norm well then what possessed you to go down there this time of night i don't know them you don't know don't add to me that way tom i want to know what you've been doing down there i hate been doing a single thing and sally i hope the gracious if i have i reckon she'd let me go now and as a general thing she would but i suppose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that weren't yards stick straight so she says very decided you just march into that setting room and stay there till i come you've been up to something you know business do and i'll lay i'll find out what it is before i'm done with you so she went away and i opened the door and walked into the setting room my but there was a crowd there 15 farmers and every one of them had a gun i was most powerful sick and slumped 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 like they weren't but i know there was because they was always taking off their hats and putting them on and scratching their heads and changing their seats and fumbling with their buttons i weren'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 lick me if she wanted to and let me get away and tell tom how we'd overdone this thing and what a thunder in heart its nest we got ourselves into so we could stop fooling around straight off and clear out with jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us at last she come and begun to ask me questions but i couldn't answer them straight i didn't know which end to me was up because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperados and say it weren't but a few minutes to midnight and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal and here was auntie packing away at the questions and me is shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks i was that scared and the place was getting hotter and hotter and the butter began to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears and pretty soon one of them says i'm for going and getting in the cabin first and right now and catching them when they come i'm most dropped and the streak of butter coming trickling down my forehead and aunt sally she said and turned white as a sheet and says for 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 runs to see and she snatches off my hat and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter and she grabbed me and hugged me and says oh what a turn you did give me i'm glad and grateful i am and ain't no worse for lux against us and it never rains but it pours and when i see that truck i thought we lost you for i'm knowed 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 not clear out the back and don't let me see no more of you till morning i was upstairs in a second and down the lightning rod and another one and shinin' through the dark for the lean to i couldn't hardly get my words out i was so anxious but i told tom as quick as i could we must jump for it now and not a minute to lose the house was full of men yonder with guns his eyes just blazed and he said no is that so ain't it bully walk if it was to do over again i bet i could fetch 200 if we could put it off till hurry hurry i says 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 come into 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 hey i'll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for him in the dark and kill him when they come and the rest scatter around a piece and listen if you can hear him coming so when they come but couldn't see us in the dark and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed but we got on to 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 was in the lean to and heard trampons 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 nothing it was so dark and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further and when he nudged us jim must glide out first and him last so he said his ear to the crack and listened and listened and listened and the steps all 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 and engine file and got to it all right and me and jim over it but tom's bridges catched fast on a splinter on the top rail and then we hear the steps coming so we had to pull loose which snapped a splinter and made a noise and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out who's that answer or I'll shoot but we didn't answer we just unfurled our heels and shoved then there was a rush and a bang bang bang and the bullets fairly whizzed around us we heard them sing out here they all they've broke for the river after them boys and turned loose the dogs so here they come full tilt we could hear them because they wore boots and yelled but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell we was in the path to the mill and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into the bush and let them go by and then dropped in behind them they had all the dogs shut up so they wouldn't scare off the robbers but by this time somebody had left them loose and here they come making pow wow enough for a million but there was our dogs so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up and when they see it want nobody but us and no excitement to offer them they only just set howdy into a right ahead toward the shouting and clattering and then we upstream again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied and hopped in and pulled for dear life toward the middle of the river but didn't make no more noise than we was 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 till we were so far away the sounds got dim and died out and when we stepped on to the raft i says now old jim you're a free man again and i bet you won't ever be a slave no more in a more good job it was hook it is planned beautiful and it is done beautiful and they ain't nobody can get up a plan that's more mixed up and splendid than what that one was we was all glad as we could be but tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg when me and jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before it was hurting him considerable and bleeding so w