Chapter 1 of Tom Sawyer Abroad. CHAPTER 1 Tom Seeks New Adventures Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean, the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky gym free, and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torch-like procession and speeches, and everybody hurried and shouted and made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had always been hankering to be. For a while he was satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some called him Tom Sawyer the Traveller, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. You see, he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but land! They just knuckled to the dirt before Tom. Well, I don't know. Maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful, long, and slim, and kind of good-hearted and silly and bald-headed, on account of his age, and about the talkiest old creedier I ever see. For as much as thirty years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation.  And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring and gawking over his travels, and it just gives the poor old man the high strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say, my land, did you ever, my goodness sakes alive, and all such things. But he couldn't pull away from it any more than the fly that's got his hind leg fast in the molasses. And all was when Tom come to arrest the poor old critter would chip in on his same old travels, and work them for all they were worth, but they were pretty faded and didn't go for much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings, and then the old man again, and so on and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out the other. You see, Parsons' travels happened like this. When he first got to be postmaster and was green in the business, become a letter for somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village, well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and he reckoned the government would hold him responsible for it, and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights. He couldn't eat. He was thinned down to a shatter. Yet he doesn't ask anybody's advice, for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the government know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good. If he happened to see a person standing over the place had given the cold shivers and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till the town was as still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out and buried in another place. Of course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and whispering, because the way he was looking and acting they judged he had killed somebody or done something terrible. They didn't know what, and if he had been a stranger they would have lynched him. Well, as I was saying, he got so he couldn't stand it any longer. So he made up his mind to pull out for Washington and just go to the President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the whole government and say, now, there she is, do with me what you're a mind to, though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family that must starve and yet hadn't the thing to do with it, which is the whole truth and I can swear to it. So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steam-boating and some stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of villages and four cities. He was gone most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels made him the greatest man in all that region and the most talked about, and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him, and there they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it. Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler. Some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was about a standoff, so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures and try to get ahead that way. That bullet wound in Tom's leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best he could and had a disadvantage, too. For Tom didn't set still, as he ordered on, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that he had in Washington. For Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along. Nat's adventure was like this. I don't know how true it is, maybe he got it out of a paper or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he did know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he turned pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near as I can remember. He come a lopin' into Washington and put up his horse and shoved out to the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President was up to the capital and just going to start for Philadelphia. Not a minute to lose, if he wanted to catch him. Nat most dropped had made him so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he sees his chance. He rushes out and shouts, A half a dollar if you get me to the capital in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes. Done, says the darky. Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went, a rippin' and tarin' over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loop and hung for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm loops, and made his legs fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows. And he was in awful danger. But the more they all shouted, the more the nigger whooped and yelled, and lashed the horses, and shouted, Don't you fret, I was going to get you down, time-boss, I was going to do it, sure! For you see, he thought they were all hurrying him up, and of course he couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it, and when they got to the capital at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted.  And Nat gave the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't have got there in time, nor anywhere near it. It was a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his butt on mighty lively to hold his own against it. Well, by and by, Tom's glory got to pailing down gradually, on account of other things turning up for the people to talk about. First, a horse race, and on top of that a house of fire, and on top of that the circus, and on top of that the eclipse. And that started a revival, same as it always does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak, and you never see a person so sick and disgusted. Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day out, and when I asked him what was he in such a state about, he said it most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him getting older and older, and no wars breaking out, and no way of making a name for himself, that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it. So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated, and pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free and generous that way. There's a plenty of boys that's mighty good and friendly when you've got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way, they don't say a word to you and try to hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way. I can say that for him. There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you. But when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you most to death, but there ain't a going to be no core. But I notice they always get come up with, all you got to do is to wait. Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. It was a crusade. What's a crusade? I says. He looked scornful, the way he always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says, Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is? No, says I. I don't, and I don't care to another. I've lived till now and done without it and had my health too, but as soon as you tell me I'll know and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I may ever have any occasion to use them. There was Lance Williams. He learned how to talk chock-taw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now then, what's a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin. If it's a patent right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson, he—patent right, says he.  Why, a crusade is a kind of war. I thought he must be losing his mind, but no, he was in real earnest and went right on, perfectly calm. A crusade is a war to recover the holy land from the panem. Which holy land? Why, the holy land—there ain't but one. What do we want of it?  It's in the hands of the panem, and it's our duty to take it away from them. How did we come to let them get hold of it? We didn't come to let them get hold of it. They always had it. Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it? Why, of course it does. Who said it didn't? I studied over it, but couldn't seem to get at the right of it no way. I says, it's too many for me, Tom Sawyer.  It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own. But it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought not to stand in a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them. Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see.  Farming is business, just common, low-down business. That's all it is. It's all you can say for it. But this is higher. This is religious and totally different. Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it? Certainly. It's always been considered so. Jim, he shook his head and says, My's Tom, I reckon there's a mistake about it, some of us. And a most surely is. I was religious myself. I know plenty of religious people. But I ain't run across none that acts like that.  If either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Curdloan, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Boulayne, and lots more the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the Panims for more than 200 years trying to take their land away from them, and swum neck deep and blood the whole time. And yet, here's a couple of sap-headed country yahoo's out in the backwoods of Missouri, setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than they did, talkin' about cheek! Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant and wished we hadn't been quite so chipper. I couldn't say nothin', and Jim, he couldn't for a while. And then he says, Well, then, I reckon it's all right. Cos, if they didn't know, they ain't no use for po-ignorant folks like us to be trying to know. And so, if it's our duty, we got to go and tackle it, and then do the best we can. Same time, I feel as sorry for them Panims as Mars Tom.  That's it, you see. If we was to go amongst them, just we three, and say we's hungry, and ask them for a bite to eat, why, maybe they's just like the other people. Don't you reckon they is? Why, they'd give it? I know they would. And then, then what? Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like this. It ain't no use.  I knows it's perfectly well, Mars Tom. Indeed, I knows it perfectly well.  I don't want to argue any more with people like you and Hook Finn. It's always wandering from the subject, and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate. Now, that's just where Tom Sawyer weren't far. Jim didn't mean no harm, and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right, and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the howl of it, and that was all, and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it was because we was ignorant. Yes, and pretty dull, too. I ain't denying that. But, land, that ain't no crime, I should think. But he wouldn't hear no more about it. Just said if we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit he would have raised a couple of thousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieutenant, and Jim a subtler, and took the command himself and brushed the whole panum outfit into the sea like flies, and come back across the world in a glory-like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again, and he didn't. When he once got set you couldn't budge him. But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up roused, with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the panum was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that. Now, Tom, he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book which he was always reading, and it was a wild notion because, in my opinion, he never could have raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would have got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it. CHAPTER II The Balloon Ascension Well, Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots about him somewheres, and he had to shove him aside. So at last he was about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers began to talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn't go he might never have another chance to see a balloon. And next he found out that Nat Parsons was going down to see it, and that decided him, of course. He wasn't going to have Nat Parsons coming back bragging about seeing the balloon and him having to listen to it and keep quiet, so he wanted me and Jim to go too. And we went. It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. It was way out toward the edge of town in a vacant lot, corner of 12th Street, and there was a big crowd around it making fun of it and making fun of the man, a lean palefeller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you know, and they kept saying it wouldn't go, and it made him a hot to hear them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to face with one of the men that lifts up nations and make civilizations and was too dull to know it. And right here, on this spot, their own children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument, and then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again and yell at him and ask him what was his name before he was married and what he would take to not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all the things that a crowd says when they got hold of a feller that they see they can plague. Well, some things they said was funny, yes, and mighty witty, too. I ain't denying that, but all the same it weren't fair nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift of talk to answer back with, but good land, what did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn't do him no good, and it was just nuts for them. They had him, you know, but that was his way. I reckon he couldn't help it. He was made, so I judge. He was a good enough sort of critter, and had no harm in him, and was just a genius, as the paper said, which wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound. We've got to be the way we're made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler and listened and tried to learn, it would be better for them. The part the Professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and had watertight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in, and a body could sit on them and make beds on them too. We went aboard, and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old Nat Parsons was there too. The Professor kept fussing around getting ready, and the people went ashore, and drifting out one at a time, and old Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind us. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves. But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big shout and turned around. The city was dropping from under us like a shot. It made me sick all through. I was so scared. Jim turned gray and couldn't say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The city went on dropping down and down and down, but we didn't seem to be doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together closer and closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling around, and the streets like threads and cracks, and then it all kind of melted together. There wasn't any city any more. It was only a big scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and down the river about a thousand miles. Though, of course, it wasn't so much. By and by the earth was a ball, just a round ball of a dull color, with shiny stripes wriggling and winding round over it, which was rivers. The winter Douglas always told me the earth was round like a ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions of hers, and of course I paid no attention to that one because I could see myself that the world was the shape of a plate and flat. I used to go up on the hill and take a look round and prove it for myself because I reckon the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for yourself and not take anybody say so. But I had to give in now that the winter was right. That is, she was right as to the rest of the world, but she weren't right about the part our village is in. That part is the shape of a plate and flat. I take my oath. The Professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep, but he broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. He said something like this. Idiots! They said it wouldn't go, and they wanted to examine it, and spy around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody knows the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes it move but me. And it's a new power, a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth. Steams foolishness to it. They said I couldn't go to Europe, to Europe. Why, there's power aboard to last five years and feed for three months. They are fools. What do they know about it? Yes, and they said my airship was flimsy. Why, she's good for fifty years. I can sail the skies all my life if I want to, and steer where I please, though they laughed at that, and said I couldn't. Couldn't steer! Come here, boy, we'll see.  He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learned him the whole thing in nearly no time, and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He made him fetch the ship down most to the earth, and had him spinner along so close to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain. And he flung out printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going to Europe. Tom got so he could steer straight for a tree, till he got nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it. Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her. And he'd done it first rate, too, and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. But the minute we started to skip out, the professor says, No you don't, and shot her up in the air again. It was awful. I began to beg, and so did Jim, but it only give his temper a rise. And he began to rage around and look wild out of his eyes, and I was scared of him. Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to get over it, and especially people saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and out there saying she weren't simple, and would be always getting out of order. Get out of order! That, graveled him. He said that she couldn't any more get out of order than the Solar Sister. He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have his secret at all, now it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it too. Well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on. He gave us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper box revolver under his head, and said if anybody had come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him. We sat scrunched up together and thought considerable, but didn't say much, only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something or bust. He was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there, but, laws, we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track. Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell too, about a two o'clock feel, as near as I could make out, Tom said the Professor was so quiet this time he must be asleep, and we'd better— Better what, I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over because I had known what he was thinking about. Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship, he says. I says, no, sir, don't you budge, Tom Sawyer. And Jim—well, Jim was kind of gasping, he was so scared. He says, Oh, Mars, Tom, don't. If you touches him, he wheeze gone, wheeze gone, shawl. I ain't gone near him. Not for nothing in this world. Mars, Tom, he's plum crazy. Tom whispers and says, That's why we've got to do something. If he wasn't crazy, I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here, you couldn't hire me to get out. Now that I've got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground, if he was in his right mind, but it's no good politics sailing around like this with a person that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then drown us all. We've got to do something, I tell you, and do it before he wakes up too, or we may never get another chance. Come! But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn't get up the steering gear and land the ship. We begged and begged him not to, but it weren't no use. So he got down on his hands and knees and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we holding our breath and watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the professor's head and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward the professor's feet where the steering buttons was. Well, he got there all safe and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat and soft in the bottom and lay still. The professor stirred and says, What's that? But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he began to mutter and mumble and nestle like a person that's going to wake up, and I thought I was going to die. I was so worried and scared. Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I most cried I was so glad. She buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn't see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We was afraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners. And no help. But Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped sudden and my heart fell down, amongst my other works, because I couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the professor, which I thought it was. Dear, I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You can't land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on raining, for I didn't want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so awful uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so. And a daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle standing sober and thinking.  End of Chapter 2 This is Chapter 3 of Tom Sawyer Abroad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain. Chapter 3. Tom Explains We went to sleep about four o'clock and woke up about eight. The professor was sitting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come about the midship compass. That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. It makes the body feel pretty near-comfortable, even when he's up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together. There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I said, Tom, didn't we start east? Yes. How fast have we been going? Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round. Sometimes he said we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a hundred. Said that with a gale to help, he could make three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale and wanted to blow in the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find it. Well, then it's just as I reckoned. The professor lied. Why? Because if we was going so fast, we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn't we? Certainly. Well, we ain't. What's the reason we ain't? I know by the color. We're right over Illinois yet, and you can see for yourself that Indiana ain't in sight.  You know by the color? Yes, of course I do. What's the color got to do with it? It's got everything to do with it. Illinois is green. Indiana is pink. You show me any pink down here if you can. No, sir, it's green. Indiana pink?  It ain't no lie. I've seen it on the map, and it's pink. You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted.  Seen it on the map. Huck Finn, did you reckon the states was the same color out of doors as they are on the map? Tom Sawyer, what's the map for? Ain't it to learn you facts? Of course. Well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? That's what I want to know. Shucks, you muggins, it don't tell lies. It don't, don't it? No, it don't. All right, then. If it don't, there ain't no two states the same color. You get around that if you can, Tom Sawyer. He see I had him, and Jim see it too, and I tell you, I felt pretty good. For Tom Sawyer was always a hard person to get ahead of. Jim slapped his leg and says, I tell you, that's smart. That's right down smart. Ain't no use, smart Tom. He got you this time, sure. He slapped his leg again and says, my land, but it was smart one. I never felt so good in my life, and yet I didn't know I was saying anything much till it was out. I was just moaning along, perfectly careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never thinking of such a thing at all when, all of a sudden, out it come. Why, it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of cornpone and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites into a diamond. Now all that he knows first off is that it's some kind of gravel he's bit into, but he don't find out it's the diamond till he gets it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another and has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad. Yes, and proud too, though, when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't entitled to as much credit as he would have been if he'd been hunting diamonds. You can see the difference easy if you think it over. You see, an accident that way ain't fairly as big as a thing as a thing that's done the purpose. Anybody could find that diamond in that cornpone, but, mind you, it's got to be somebody that's got that kind of a cornpone. That's where that fella's credit comes in, you see. And that's where mine comes in. I don't claim no great things. I don't reckon I could have done it again, but I'd done it that time. That's all I claim, and I hadn't no more idea I could do such a thing and want any more thinking about it or trying to than you be this minute. Why, I was just as calm, a body couldn't be any calmer, and yet all of a sudden out it come. And I have often thought of that time, and I can remember just the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. I can see it all, beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of miles all round, and towns and villages scattered everywhere as under us, here and there and yonder, and the professor mooning over a chart on his little table, and Tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry, and one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time, and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and farms and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke, and now and then a little puff of white, and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. And we left the bird and the train both behind, way behind, and done it easy too. But Tom, he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant blather skites, and then he says, suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is making a picture of them. What is the main thing that that artist has got to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you look at them, heydy? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and paint both of them brown? Certainly you don't. He paints one of them blue, and then you can't make no mistake, it's just the same with the maps. That's why they make every state a different color, it ain't to deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself. But I couldn't see no argument about that, neither could Jim.  I see one of them painting away one day down in an old Hank Wilson's back lot, and I went down to see, and he was painting that old brindled cow with the near horn gone. You know most of what I means? And I asked him, What's he's painting her for? And he says, When you get her painted, the picture's worth a hundred dollars. Mars, Tom, he could've got the cow for fifteen, and I told him so. Well, sir, if you'll believe me, he just shook his head, and that painter did, and went on a dobbing. Bless you, Mars, Tom, they don't know nothing. Tom, he lost his temper. I noticed a person most always does, that's got laid out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better. Then he'd see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock, and then at the turnip again, and says, That's funny. That clock's near about an hour fast. So he put up his turnip, and then he'd see another clock, and took a look, and it was an hour fast, too. That puzzled him. That's a mighty curious thing, he says. I don't understand it. Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was an hour fast, too.  I says, considerably scared. Well, what's been and gone and happened now? Why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of Pennsylvania or New York or somewhere's around there. I'm sorry, you don't mean it. Yes I do, and it's dead sure. We've covered about fifteen degrees of longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks are right. We've come close on to eight hundred miles. I didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back just the same. In my experience I know that it wouldn't take much short of two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his mind and studying. Pretty soon he says, Mars Tom, did you say them clocks is right? Yes, they're right. Ain't your watch right too? She's right for St. Louis, but she's an hour wrong for here. Mars Tom, is you trying to let on that the time ain't the same everywhere's? No, it ain't the same everywhere's by a long shot. Jim looked distressed and says, It grieves me to hear you talk like that, Mars Tom. I was right down ashamed to hear you talk like that out of the way you's been raised. Yes, sir, it'd break your Aunt Paula's heart to hear you. Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering and didn't say nothing, and Jim went on, Mars Tom, who put the people out yonder in St. Louis? The Lord done it. Who put the people here while we is? The Lord done it. Ain't they both his children? Coz they is. Well, then, is he going to discriminate, Trixim? Scriminate. I never heard such ignorance. There ain't no discriminating about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that? Jim see the pint. He was stuck. He couldn't answer. Tom says, He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to, but this case here ain't no discrimination in his, it's man's. The Lord made the day, and he made the night, but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute them around. Man did that. Mars Tom's. That's so. Man done it? Certainly. Who told him he could? Nobody. He never asked. Jim studied him in it, and says, Well, that do beat me. I wouldn't have took no such risk. But some people ain't scared nothing. They bangs right ahead.  So then there's all is an hour's difference everywhere, Mars Tom? An hour? No. It's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of them's an hour. Thirty of them's two hours, and so on. When it's one o'clock Tuesday morning in England, it's eight o'clock the night before in New York. Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted him on the leg and patted him up, and got him over the roost of his feelings, and then he says, Mars Tom, talking such talk as that. Tuesday, and one place, and Monday, and T other. Both in the same day. Huck, this ain't no place to joke up here while we is two days and one day. How you gonna got two days into one day? Can't get two hours into one hour, can ya? Can't get two niggers into one nigger, skin, can ya? Can't get two gallons of whiskey into one gallon jug, can ya? No son. Could strain the jug. Yes, and even Daniel couldn't, I don't believe. Why, look here, Huck. Supposing the Tuesday was New Years now, then, is you going to tell me it's this year and one place and last year and T other? Both in the identical same minute? It's the beatin' his rubbish. I can't stand it. I can't stand it here to tell about it. Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says, Now, what's the matter? What's the trouble? Jim could hardly speak, but he says, Mars Tom, you ain't joking, and it's so? No, I'm not, and it is so. Jim shivered again and says, Then that Monday could be the last day, and day wouldn't be no last day in England, and the dead wouldn't be called.  Please, get him to turn back. I want it to be wa— All of a sudden, we see something. And all jumped up and forgot everything and began to gaze. Tom says, Ain't that the— He catched his breath, then says, It is, sure as you live. It's the ocean! That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean or ever expected to. Tom kept muttering, Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic Land, don't it sound great? And that's it, and we are looking at it. We! Why, it's just too splendid to believe. Then we see a big bank of black smoke, and when we got near it was a city, and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge, and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute about it, and first we knowed it slid from under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone. Then we woke up, I tell you. We made a break aft and raised a whale, and begun to beg the professor to turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and we went. But nobody will ever know how bad we felt. The land was gone. All but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean, millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming and white sprays blowing from the wavedops, and only a few ships inside, wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on another, and sticking their bows under and then their sterns, and before long there weren't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all to ourselves and the roomiest place I ever see and the lonesomest. End of Chapter 3 This is Chapter 4 of Tom Sawyer Abroad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain. Chapter 4 Storm And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep, and the ocean down there without a thing on it, but just the waves. All around us was a ring where the sky and the water come together. Yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead center of it, plum in the center. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made any difference. We couldn't seem to get past that center no way. I couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring. It made a body feel creepy. It was so curious and unaccountable. Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low voice and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less talky till at last the talk ran dry all together, and we just sat there and thunk, as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time. The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead. Then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant, and he was taking the sun to see where abouts the balloon was. Then he sighed a little and looked in a book, and then he began to carry on again. He said lots of wild things, and amongst others he said he would keep up this hundred-mile gate till the middle of tomorrow afternoon, and then he'd land in London. We said we would be humbly thankful. He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest kind, one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks I ever see, and then he says, You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it. We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all. He went aft and sat down, but he couldn't seem to get that thing out of his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it and try to make us answer him, but we doesn't. It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night began to come on. By and by Tom pinched me and whispers, Look! I took a glance aft and see the Professor taking a wet out of a bottle. I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he began to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and stormy. He went on singing, Wilder and Wilder, and the thunder began to mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more and wished we couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still, but he warn't still ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise again so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard him scream out in the dark, They don't want to go to England! All right, I'll change the course! They want to leave me! I know they do! Well, they shall! And now! I most died when he said that. Then he was still again. Still, so long I couldn't bear it. And it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't ever come again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was terrible. He made a lunge for Tom and says, Overboard, you go! But it was already pitch dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or not, and Tom didn't make a sound. There was another long, horrible wait. Then there was a flash, and I see Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the rope ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch dark again, and Jim groaned out, Pull my Tom, he's gone, and made a jump for the professor. But the professor weren't there. Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, and then another that was way below, and you could only just hear it, and I heard Jim say, Pull my Tom. Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could have counted four thousand before the next flash came. When it come I see Jim on his knees, with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I was glad because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come I was watching, and down there I see somebody a swingin' in the wind on the ladder, and it was Tom. Come up! I shouts. Come up, Tom! His voice was so weak, and the wind roared, so I couldn't make out what he said, but I thought he asked, was the professor up there? I shouts. No! He's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you? Of course, all this in the dark. Huck! Who is you hollering at? I'm hollering at Tom! Oh, Huck, how can you act so when you know Pull Ma's Tom?  He thought it was Tom's ghost, you see. Tom clumbed aboard, and when Jim found it was him, and not his ghost, he hugged him and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like he was gone crazy, he was so glad, says I. What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first? I doesn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't know who it was in the dark. It could have been you, it could have been Jim. That was the way with Tom Sawyer, all with sound. He weren't coming up till he knowed where the professor was. The storm let go about this time with all its might, and it was dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and the winds sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. One second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could count the threads in your coat sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just been a death in the family. We sat there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor professor, and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him, and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, and hadn't a friend, nor nobody to encourage him, and keep him from brooding his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd rather take the rain than go meddling back there. CHAPTER IV We tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me and Jim was returning round and going back home, but Tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far toward England that we might as well go there and come back in a ship, and have the glory of saying we'd done it. About midnight the storm quit, and the moon came out, and lit up the ocean, and we began to feel comfortable and drowsy, so we stretched out on the lockers, and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun up. The sea was sparkling like diamonds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all dry again. We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood. Then Tom was disturbed. He says, You know, what that means is enough. It means that somebody has got to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship. Or she'll wander round and go wherever the wind wants her to. Well, I says, what's she been doing since we had the accident? Wandering, he says, kind of troubled. Wandering without any doubt. She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how long that's been going on, either. So then he patted her east, and said he would hold her there till we rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body could want. He couldn't have been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for the coffee, but there was water and everything else he could want, and the charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches, and wine and liquor, which weren't in our line, and books and maps and charts and an accordion, and furs and blankets and no end of rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too. Yes, the professor was well enough fixed. After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches turn and turn about. And when his watch was out, I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens, and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated it in the welkin approaching England, and folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote above the direction in big writing from Tom Sawyer the Aeronaut, and said it would stump old Nat Parsons the postmaster when it come along in the mail. I says, Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon. Well, now, who said it was a welkin, Smarty? Well, you wrote it on the letter anyway. What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin. Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin? I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around his mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say, I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a mighty good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe there's any that does. Shaxx says, but what does it mean? That's the pint. I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people use for, for, well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a person warm, do they? Of course they don't. But they put them on, don't they? Yes? All right, then. That letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the ruffle on it. I judged that that would grapple Jim and it did. Now, my's, Tom, it ain't no use to talk like that. Moreover, it's sinful.  There ain't no place to put them on. You can't put them on, and they wouldn't stay if you did. Oh, do shut up, and wait till something started that you know something about. Well, my's, Tom, surely you can't mean to say that I don't know about shirts when goodness knows I's toted home to wash and ever since.  I only— Why, my's, Tom, you said yourself that a letter, do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a metaphor. That word kind of bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says, rather timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty touchy. My's, Tom, what is a metaphor? A metaphor is a—well, it's a—a metaphor is an illustration. He see that didn't get home, so he tried again. When I say birds of a feather flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying, but they don't, my's, Tom. No, sir, did they don't? They ain't no fetters that's more locked in a bluebird than a jaybird, but if you wait till you catch us them birds together, you'll all give us a rest.  Now don't bother me any more. Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for catching Tom out. The minute Tom began to talk about birds, I judged he was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that writes books about birds and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take any amounts of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is Ornithologists, and I could have been an Ornithologist myself, because I always loved birds and creeders, and I started out to learn how to be one.  But I was aggravated about that welcome, and I wanted to know. I got the subject up again, and then Tom explained the best he could. He said, when a person made a big speech, the newspaper said the shouts of the people made the welcome ring. He said they always said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says, well, it's all right then, and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't know for certain what a welcome is, but when we land in London we'll make it ring anyway, and don't you forget it. He said an aeronaut was a person who sailed around in balloons, and said it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the aeronaut, than to be Tom Sawyer the traveller, and we would be heard of all around the world if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveller now. Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and we felt pretty good too and proud, and we kept watching with the glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing but ocean.  We wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in the dark. It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's, but Tom stayed up because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land, and didn't stand no regular watch. Well, when daylight come Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked over, and there was the land sure enough, land all around, as far as you could see, and perfectly level and yowler, and we didn't know how long we'd been over it. There weren't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead calm, but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and rough it would have looked smooth all the same in the night that way. We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor any other settlement, nor any sign of a lake or a river either. Tom was clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England. He thought England looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we'd better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted long down the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. But it kept on moderating, and in a precious little while it was most too moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering. We settled down to within thirty foot of the land, that is, it was land, if sand is land, for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumbed down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing good, that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hot embers. Next we see somebody coming, and started to meet him. But we heard Jim shout, and looked round, and he was fairly dancing and making signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we were scared anyway, and began to heal it back to the balloon. When we got close enough we understood the words, and they made me sick. Run! Run for your life! It's a lion! I can see him through the glass! Run, boys! Do please heal it the best you can! He's busted out in the menagerie, and there ain't nobody to stop him! It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could only just gasp along the way you do in the dream when there's a ghost gaining on you. Tom got to the ladder, and shinned up at a piece and waited for me, and as soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away, but Jim had clean lost his head and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along up and told me to follow, but the lion was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I doesn't try to take one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under me. But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet above ground, and there was the lion, a rippin' around under me and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder and only missing it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all up one side, but I was hangin' there helpless and couldn't climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. It is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that, and it is not to be recommended either. Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the line behind. I said, I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now, but if he went higher I would lose my head and fall sure. So he said, take a good grip, and he started. Don't go so fast, I shouted. It makes my head swim. He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down and we glided over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way, for it is uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that and not a sound. But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the line was catchin' up. His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the loop from every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under me jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other, and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they could to help us to not forget the occasion, and then some other beasts come without an invite, and they started a regular riot down there. We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever get away from them at this gate, and I couldn't hold on forever, so Tom took a think and struck another idea.  But by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more, and when they see we was really gone and they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hands and looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see their side of the matter. End of Chapter 5 This is Chapter 6 of Tom Sawyer Abroad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Tom Sawyer Abroad, Chapter 6. It's a Caravan. I was so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I made straight for my locker-bunk and stretched myself out there. But a body couldn't get back as strength and no such oven as that, so Tom gave the command to soar and Jim started her aloft. We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight again. Tom had been sitting quiet and thinking. But now he jumps up and says, I've hit you a thousand to one, I know where we are. We're in the Great Sahara, as sure as guns. He was so excited he couldn't hold still, but I wasn't. I says, Well, then, where's the Great Sahara, in England or in Scotland? Tain't in either. It's in Africa.  But I didn't more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know. It seemed too awful far away for us to have traveled.  Sure. He said he could have found out, before we sighted land, that we was crowed in the land somewheres if he hadn't thought of one thing, and when we asked him what, he said, These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them sea voyages. One of them is keeping Greenwich time, and the other is keeping St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the afternoon, by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this Greenwich clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down, and it was half past five o'clock by the Greenwich clock, and half past eleven a.m. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Greenwich clock was six hours fast. But we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by the Greenwich clock now. And I'm away out, more than four hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was pinted right, which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a wandering, way down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map! You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west? Think how fast we've travelled. And if we had gone straight east, we would be long past England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Greenwich clock is coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa, and it's just bully. Jim was gazing down with a glass. He shook his head and says, Mars Tom, I reckon days and mistakes, summers. Ain't seen no niggers yet. That's nothing. They don't live in the desert. What is that? Way off yonder. Give me a glass. He took a long look and said it was like a black string stretched across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was. Well, I said, I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out where about this balloon is. Because, as like as not, that is one of these lines here that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude. And we can drop down and look at its number, and oh, shucks, huck-fin, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you suppose there's meridians of longitude on the earth? Tom Sawyer there's set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well, and here they are and you can see for yourself. Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing. There ain't any on the ground. Tom, do you know that to be so? Certainly I do.  I never see such a liar as that map. He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his opinion too, and next minute we'd have broke loose on another argument if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and sing out, Camels! Camels! So I grabbed the glass and Jim too and took a look, but I was disappointed and says, Camels, your granny, they're spiders. Spiders in a desert, you shad. Spiders walking in a procession.  Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the air and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? Spiders good land. Spiders as big as a cow. Perhaps you like to go down and milk one of them, but they're Camels just the same. It's a caravan. That's what it is. It's a mile long. Well, then let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and ain't going to till I see it and know it. All right, he says, and give the command, lower away. As we come slanting down into the hot weather we could see that it was Camels sure enough plodding along an everlasting string of them, with bale strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels and fringes. And some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some was riding and some was walking, and the weather, well, it was just roasting. And how slow they did creep along. We swooped down now all of a sudden and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads. The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered every which way, and so did the Camels. We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile to the cool weather and watched them from there. It took them an hour to get together and form the procession again. Then they started along, but we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the caravan or us. We didn't know which. As the caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses, for that is what they was, and we see them mountain a hurry, and next here they come like a house of fire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could. They come a tearing down onto the caravan, and the next minute both sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you could only catch glimpses of them struggling together, there must have been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and scampering around and laying into each other like everything, and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in every direction, and last the robbers see they couldn't win so their chief sounded the signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering across the plain.  Then Tom took the helm and started for that yahoo, and we come a whizzing down and made a swoop and knocked him out of the saddle, child and all, and he was jarred considerable, but the child wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went staggering off to overtake his horse and didn't know what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time. We judged the woman would go and get the child now, but she didn't. We could see her, through the glass, still set in there with her head bowed down on her knees, so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly half a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the caravan people could get to us to do us any harm. And besides, we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the wounded. We thought we chanced it, and we did. We swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse, and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable nearby, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her, the child goo-gooed the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid, and snatched it, and hugged it, and dropped it, and hugged Jim, and then snatched off a gold chain, and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up the child again, and sobbing and glorifying all the time, and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky, and the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders, and the child with its arms locked around her neck, and there she stood, as long as we was in sight assailing away in the sky. CHAPTER VII noon, says Tom, and so it was. His shatter was just a blot around his feet. We looked, and the Greenwich clock was so close to twelve the difference didn't mount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of us, or right south of us, one or two other, and he reckoned by the weather, and the sand, and the camels it was north, and a good many miles north too, as many as from New York to the city of Mexico he guessed. Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the world, unless it might be some kinds of birds, a wild pigeon maybe, or a railroad. But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the world that could do that, except one. And that was a flea. A flea? Why Mars, Tom. In the first place, he ain't a bird, strictly speaking. He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he? I don't rightly know Mars, Tom, but I suspect he's only just an animal. No, I reckon that won't do another. He ain't big enough for an animal. He must be a bug. Yeah, so that's what he is. He's a bug. I bet he ain't. But let it go. What's your second place? Well, in second place, birds is critters that goes a long ways, but a flea don't. He don't, don't he? Come now, what is a long distance if you know? Why, it's miles, and lots of them, and anybody knows that. Can't a man walk miles? Yes, he can. As many as a railroad? Yeah, sir. If you give him time. Can't a flea? Well, I suppose so, if you give some heaps of time. Now you begin to see, don't you, that distance ain't the thing to judge by at all. It's the time it takes to go the distance in that counts, ain't it? Well, it do look so-so, but I wouldn't have believed it, Mars, Tom. It's a matter of proportion. That's what it is. And when you come to gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and your railroad alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than about ten miles in an hour. Not much over ten thousand times his own length. But all the book says any common ordinary third class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length. Yes, and he can make five jumps a second too. Seven hundred and fifty times his own length in one little second. For he don't fool away any time stopping and starting. He does them both at the same time. You'll see if you try to put your finger on him. Now, that's a common ordinary third class flea's date. But you take an Italian first class that's been the pet of the nobility all his life and hasn't ever known what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own length and keep it up all day. Five such jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a second. Say, a mile and a half. It's ninety miles a minute. It's considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. Where's your man now? Yes, and your bird and your railroad and your balloon. Laws they don't amount to shucks alongside of a flea. A flea is just a comet piled down small. Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said, is them figures just exactly true and no joking and no lies, Mars Tom? Yes they are. They're perfectly true. Well then, honey, a body's got to respect a flea. I ain't had no respect for them to fall, scarcely, but they ain't no getting round it. They do deserve it, and that's certain. Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense and brains and brightness and proportion to their size than any other critter in the world. A person can learn them most anything, and they learn it quicker than any other critter too. They've been learned to haul little carriages and harness and go this way and that way and tether way according to their orders. Yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as exact according to orders as soldiers does it. They've been learned to do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. Suppose you could cultivate a flea up to the size of a man and keep his natural smartness a growing and a growing right along up bigger and bigger and keener and keener in the same proportion? Where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That flea would be president of the United States, and you couldn't any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning. My land, Mars-Tom, I never know there was so much to the beast. No sir, I never had no idea of it, and that's the fact. There's more to him by long sight than there is to any other critter, man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all. People have so much to say about an ant's strength and an elephant's analocomotives. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two or three hundred times his own weight, and none of them can come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very particular, and you can't fool him. His instinct, or his judgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear and don't ever make a mistake. People think all humans are a lack to a flea. It ain't so. There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of them. I've never had one of them on me in my life—Mars-Tom. It's so? I ain't joking? Well, sir, I ain't ever heard the likes of that before. Jim couldn't believe it, and I couldn't. So we had to drop down to the sand and get a supply and sea. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand. But not a one of them lit on Tom. There weren't no explaining it. But there it was, and there weren't no getting round it. He said it had always been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them as not. They'd never touch him nor bother him. We went up to the cold weather to freeze him out and stayed a little spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazing along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour the way we'd been doing for the last few hours. The reason was that the longer we was in that solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert and then loving it. So we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes stretched out on the lockers, reading, sometimes taking a nap. It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find land and get ashore, but it was. But we had got over that, clean over it. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want to be anywhere else. Why, it seemed just like home. It most seemed as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And always I had had hateful people around me and nagging at me and pestering of me and scolding and finding fault and fussing and bothering and sticking to me and keeping after me and making me do this and making me do that and tether and always selecting out the things I didn't want to do and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something else and just aggravated the life out of a body all the time. But up here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely and plenty to eat and plenty of sleep and strange things to see and no nagging and no pestering and no good people and just holiday all the time. Land, I warn't in no hurry to get out and bucket civilization again.   Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that and it's the darlingest place there is. We had supper and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see. The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer and once we see a lion standing all alone by himself just all alone on the earth it seemed like and his shatter laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink that's the kind of moonlight to have. Mainly we laid on our backs and talked. We didn't want to go to sleep. Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian nights now. He said it was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened. So we looked down and watched while he told about it because there ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about. It was a tale about a camel driver that had lost his camel and he come along in the desert and met a man and says, Have you run across a stray camel today? And the man says, Was he blind in his left eye? Yes. Had he lost an upper front tooth? Yes. Was his off hind leg lame? Yes. Was he loaded with millet seed on one side and honey on the other? Yes. But you needn't go into no more details. That's the one. And I'm in a hurry. Where did you see him? I ain't seen him at all, the man says. Ain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close then? Because when a person knows how to use his eyes everything has got a meaning to it. But most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I know the camel had been along because I seen his track. I know he was lame in his off hind leg because he had favoured that foot and trod light on it and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his teeth print showed it. The millet seed sifted out on one side. The ants told me that. The honey leaked out on the other. The flies told me that. I know all about your camel, but I ain't seen him. Jim says, Go on, Mars-Tom. It's mighty good tale and powerful interest in. That's all, Tom says. All, says Jim astonished. What come of the camel? I don't know. Mars-Tom, don't the tale say? No. Jim puzzled a minute. Then he says, Well, if that ain't the beatin'est tale ever I struck, it just gets to the place where the interest is gettin' red-hot and down she breaks. Why, Mars-Tom, there ain't no sense in the tale that acts like that. Ain't you got no idea whether the man got the camel back or not? No, I haven't. I see myself there weren't no sense in the tale to chop Square off that way before it come to anything. But I weren't going to say so because I could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flattened out and the way Jim had popped on to the weak place and I don't think it's fair for everybody to pile on to a fellow when he's down. But Tom he whirls on me and says, What do you think of the tale? Of course, then I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did seem to me too, same as it did to Jim, then as long as the tale stopped Square in the middle and never got to no place it really weren't worth the trouble of telling. Tom's chin dropped on his breast and instead of being mad as I reckoned he'd be to hear me scoff at his tale that way. He seemed to be only sad and he says, Some people can see and some can't, just as that man said, let alone a camel if a cyclone had gone by you duffers wouldn't have noticed the truck. I don't know what he meant by that and he didn't say. It was just one of his irrelevances, I reckon. He was full of them sometimes when he was in a close place and couldn't see no other way out. But I didn't mind. We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough and he couldn't get away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation too, I reckon, much as he tried not to let on. END OF CHAPTER VII We had an early breakfast in the morning and set looking down on the desert and the weather was ever so balmy and lovely, although we weren't high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the desert because it cools off so fast. And so by the time it is getting toward dawn you were skimming along only a little ways above the sand. We was watching the shatter of the balloon slide along the ground and now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring and then down on the shatter again when all of a sudden almost right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about perfectly quiet like they was asleep.  It gave us the cold shivers and made us hush down too and talk low like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow and stopped. There was men and women and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery like the pictures of monies you see in books and yet they looked just as human. You wouldn't have believed it. Just like they was asleep. Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand but most of them not for the sand was thin there and the bed was gravel and hard. Most of the clothes had rotted away and when you took hold of a rag it tore with a touch like spider web. Tom reckoned they had been laying there for years. Some of the men had rusty guns by them. Some had swords on and had shawl belts with long silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had their loads on yet but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the frayed out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to the dead people any more so we took one apiece and some pistols. We took a small box too because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine and then we wanted to bury the people but there weren't no way to do it that we could think of and nothing to do it with but sand and that would blow away again of course. Then we mounted high and sailed away and pretty soon that black spot on the sand was out of sight and we wouldn't ever see them poor people again in this world. We wondered and reasoned and tried to guess how they come to be there and how it all happened to them but we couldn't make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost and wandered round and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death but Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them and so that guess wouldn't do so at last we'd give it up and judged we wouldn't think about it no more because it made us low spirited. Then we opened the box and it had gems and jewels in it quite a pile and some little veils of the kind that dead women had on with fringes made out of curious gold money that we weren't acquainted with. We wondered if we'd better go and try to find them again and give it back but Tom thought it over and said no it was a country that was full of robbers and they would come and steal it and then the sin would be on us for putting the temptation in their way so we went on but I wished we had took all they had so there wouldn't have been no temptation at all left. We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there and was dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water but it was spoiled and bitter besides being pretty near hot enough to scald your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi River water the best in the world and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help but no the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well we hadn't been so very very thirsty before whilst we was interested in the lost people but we was now and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant like a dog. Tom said to keep a sharp lookout all around everywhere because we'd got to find an oasis or there weren't no telling what would happen so we'd done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time till our arms got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours, three hours, just gazing and gazing and nothing but sand, sand, sand and you could see the quivering heat shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't stand it to look around on them baking planes. I laid down on the locker and give it up. But by and by Tom raised a whoop and there she was a lake wide and shiny with palm trees leaning over to sleep and there shatters in the water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us. We just slapped on a hundred mile gate and calculated to be there in seven minutes, but she stayed the same old distance away all the time. We couldn't seem to gain on her. Yes, sir, just as far and shiny and like a dream. But we couldn't get no nearer and at last all of a sudden she was gone. Tom's eyes took a spread and he says, Boys, it was a my ridge. Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing to be glad about. I says, Maybe. I don't care nothing about his name. The thing I want to know is what's become of it. Jim was trembling all over and so scared he couldn't speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he could have done it. Tom says, What's become of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone. Yes, I know, but where's it gone to? He looked me over and says, Well now, Huck Finn, where would it go to?  No, I don't. What is it? It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything to it.  Didn't I see the lake? Yes, you think you did. I don't think nothing about it. I did see it.  It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of pleading and distressed, Maz, Tom, please don't say such things in such an awful time as this.  Same way like Ananias and Sefra. The lake was there. I've seen it just as plain as I see you in Huck this minute. I says, Why, he's seen it himself. He was the very one that's seen it first, now then. Yes, Maz, Tom, it's so. You can't deny it. We all seen it, and that prove it was there. Proves it. How does it prove it? Same way it does in the courts and everywhere, Maz, Tom. One person might be drunk or dreamy or southern, and he could be mistaken. And two might, maybe. But I tell you, Si, when three sees a thing drunk or so, but it's so. Dane, no getting round dat, and you knows it, Maz, Tom. I don't know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the other every day. Did that prove that the sun done it? Of course it did, and besides, they want no occasion to prove it. A body that's got any sense ain't quite a doubt it. That she is now sailing through the sky like she all has done. Tom turned to me then, and says, What do you say? Is the sun standing still? Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody ain't blind can see it don't stand still? Well, he says, I'm lost in the sky with no company, but a parcel of low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a university did three or four hundred years ago. It weren't fair play, and I let him know it. I says, Throwin' mud ain't arguing, Tom Sawyer.  Yell, Jim, just then. Now, Maz, Tom, what you once say? Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says, I reckon you're satisfied now, Tom Sawyer, but he says perfect to come. Yes, satisfied, there ain't no lake there. Jim says, Don't talk so, Maz, Tom. It sky-ers me to hear you.  Oh, but don't she look good? I don't know how I was going to wait till he gets there. It's so thirsty.   Did I won't, and bless you, honey, I couldn't if I wanted to. We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it, and all of a sudden it was gone again. Jim staggered and most fell down. When he got his breath he says gasping like a fish, Maz, Tom, it's a ghost, that's what it is, and I hopes to goodness we ain't going to see it no more. There's been a lake, and something's happened, and the lake's dead, and we've seen its ghost, and we've seen it twice, and that's proof. The desert's haunted. It's haunted, Joel. Oh, Maz, Tom, let's get out of it. I'd rather die than have the night catch us in it again, and the ghosts are that lake come a morning around us, and we asleep and don't know the danger we's in. Ghost, you gander. It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person's imagination. If I— give me the glass. He grabbed it and began to gaze off to the right. It's a flock of birds, he says. It's getting toward sundown, and they're making a beeline across our track for somewheres. They mean business. Maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to starboard. Port your helm. Hard down. There. Ease up. Steady as you go. We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when we had followed them an hour and a half, and was getting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty, clean to unendurableness, Tom says, Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, a way ahead of the birds. Jim got the first glimpse and slumped down on the locker-sick. He was most crying, and says, She's dagon, Ma's Tom. She's dagon, and I knows I's going to die, because when a body sees a ghost a third time, that's what it means. I wish I'd never come in this balloon that I does. He wouldn't look no more. And what he said made me afraid, too, because I knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts, so then I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and ghost some other way, but he wouldn't. He said we was ignorant, superstitious, blather-skites. Yes, and he'll get come up with one of these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they are.  We done it, and there was the sure enough water right under us, clear and blue and cool and deep and wavy with a breeze, the loveliest sight that ever was, and all about it was grassy banks and flowers and shady groves of big trees looped together with vines, and all looking so peaceful and comfortable enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful. Jim did cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out of his mind for joy.   It weren't so very hot, because it was close on to evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in school and in towns and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them, when there ain't no civilization, nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness around. Lions coming! Lions! Quick, Mars, Tom! Jump for your life, Huck! Oh, and didn't we? We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off, he always done it whenever he got excited and scared. And so now, instead of just easing the ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a raft of power and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before he'd got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next. So there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on the wind. But Tom, he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down and back toward the lake where the animals was gathering like a camp meeting, and I judged he had lost his mind too, for he know'd I was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and things? But no, his head was level, he know'd what he was about. He swooped down to within thirty or forty feet of the lake and stopped right over the center and sung out, Let go and drop! I done it, and shot down feet first, and seemed to go about a mile toward the bottom, and when I come up he says, Now, lay on your back and float till you're rested, and got your pluck back. Then I'll dip the ladder in the water, and you can climb aboard. I done it. Now that was ever so smart and tom, because if he had started off somewhere else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would have come along too, and might have kept us hunting a safe place till I got tuckered out and fell. And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hog more than their share. So there was another insurrection, and you never see anything like it in the world. There must have been fifty of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was which, and the sand and fur are flying, and when they got done some was dead, and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places, and the others looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and have some fun, but which we didn't want any. As for the clothes, they weren't any any more. Every last rag of them was inside of the animals, and not agreeing with them very well, I don't reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there was knives in the pockets too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk, and marbles and fish hooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was bothering me was that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came across any, because the bridges was as long as tunnels, and the coats and things, according. Still there was everything a tailor needed, and Jim was a kind of jack-legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two down for us, that would answer.