This is Chapter 11 of Huckleberry Finn. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 11. Huck and the Woman. The Search. Prevarication. Going to Goshen. "'Come in,' says the Woman, and I did. She says, take a cheer!' I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says, what might your name be?' Fire Williams. "'Whereabouts do you live, in this neighborhood?' "'Norman, in Hookerville, seven miles below. I've walked all the way, and I'm all tired out.' "'Hungry, too, I reckon.  I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at the farm, so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late.  He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I ain't ever been here before. Do you know him?' "'No, but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here all night.  I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't a fear to the mark.' She said she wouldn't let me go up by myself, but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in an hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know, but they'd made a mistake coming to our town instead of letting well alone, and so on and so on, till I was afraid I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the town. But by and by she dropped on to Pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars, only she got at ten, and all about Pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says, Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in Hookerville, but we don't know who twas that killed Huck Finn. Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that'll like to know who killed him, some think old Finn done it himself. No, is that so? Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nah he come to get lynched. But before night they changed round and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim. Why, he—I stopped, I reckon I better keep still. She run on and never noticed I had put in at all.  You see, he'd come to town the morning after the murderer and told about it, and was out with him on the ferry boat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see.  They found out he hadn't been seen since ten o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you see, and while they was full of it, next day back comes old Finn and went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them.  People do say he weren't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything on him, you know. Everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in Huck's money as easy as nothing. Yes, I reckon so. Don't see nothing in the way of it.  Oh no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it, but they'll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him. Why, are they after him yet? Well, you're innocent, ain't you. Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far from here. I'm one of them. But I ain't talked it around. A few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the Log Shanty, and they happen to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island over Yonder that they call Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there, says I. No, nobody says they. I didn't say any more, but I'd done some thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there about the head of the island, a day or two before that. So I says to myself, like it's not that nigger's hiding over there. Anyway, says I, it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. I ain't seen any smoke since, so I reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him. But husband's going over to see him and another man. He was gone up the river, but he got back to-day, and I told him, as soon as he got here, two hours ago. I had got so uneasy I couldn't sit still. I had to do something with my hands. So I took up a needle off the table, and went to threading it. My hand shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested. And I was, too, and says, Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get it. Is your husband going over there tonight? Oh, yes. He went uptown with the man I was telling you of to get a boat, and see if they could borrow another gun. They'll go over after midnight. Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime? Yes. And couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll likely be asleep, and then they can slip round through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dark if he's got one. I didn't think of that. The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit comfortable. Pretty soon she says, What did you say your name was, honey? Mary Williams. Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't look up. It seemed to me I said it was Sarah, so I felt sort of cornered and was afeard maybe I was looking at, too. I wish the woman would say something more. The longer she sat still, the uneasier I was. But now she says, Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first came in. Oh, yes, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah's my first name. Some calls me Sarah. Some calls me Mary. Oh, that's the way of it? Yes, I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there anyway. I couldn't look up yet. Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned a place, and so forth, and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right about the rats.  She said she had to have things handy to throw at them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. She showed me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot with it generally. But she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and directly banged away at a rat, but she missed him wide, and said, ouch, it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn't let on.  She said that was first rate, and she reckoned I would hide the next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I held up my two hands, and she put the hank over them, and went on talking about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say, ouch, keep your eye on the rats! You better have the lead in your lap handy! So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my legs together on it, and she went on talking. But only about a minute. Then she took off the hank, and looked me straight in the face, very pleasant, and says, Come, now, what's your real name? What, Mom? What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob, or what is it? I reckon I shook like a leaf. But I didn't know hardly what to do. But I says, Please don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, Mom. If I'm in the way here, I'll— No, you won't. Sit down and stay where you are.  You just tell me your secret, and trust me, I'll keep it. And once more, I'll help you.  It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it.  Bless you, child, I wouldn't tell on you. Tell me all about it now. That's a good boy.  Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty miles back from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer. He went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and I had been three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights and hid daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way, and I had a pletty. I said I believed my Uncle Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for this town of Goshen. Goshen, child, this ain't Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen's ten miles further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen? Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I must take the right hand and five miles would fetch me to Goshen. He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong. Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. I got to be moving along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight. Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it. So she put me up a snack and says, Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer up prompt now. Don't stop to study over it. Which end gets up first? The hind end, Mum. Well, then a horse. The forward end, Mum. Which side of a tree does the moss grow on? North side? If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction? The whole fifteen, Mum. Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. What's your real name now? George Peters, Mum. Well, try to remember it, George.  And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool a man, maybe. Bless you, child. When you set out to thread a needle, don't hold a thread still and fetch the needle up to it. Hold a needle still and poke the thread at it. That's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does to the way.  Throw stiff arm from the shoulder like there was a pivot there for it to turn on like a girl, not from the wrist and elbow with your arm out to one side like a boy. And mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap, she throws her knees apart. She don't clap them together the way you did when you catch the lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle, and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now, trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams, George Alexander Peters, and if you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I'll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river-road all the way, and next time you tramp, take shoes and socks with you. The river-road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to Goshen, I reckon. I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I jumped in and was off in a hurry. I went upstream far enough to make the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the sun-bonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then. When I was about the middle, I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stopped and listened. The sound come faint over the water, but clear—eleven. When I struck the head of the island, I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot. Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place a mile and a half below, as hard as I could go. I landed, and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern. There, Jim laid, sound asleep on the ground.  There ain't a minute to lose! There after us! Jim never asked no questions. He never said a word. But the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow-cove where she was hid. We put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that. I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look, but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. Then we got out the raft, and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still, never saying a word. It must have been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come along, we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore, and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought we'd be able to get there, but we were able to get there. We were able to get there, and we were able to get to the shore, and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing line, or anything to eat. We was in rather too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It weren't good judgment to put everything on the raft. If the men went to the island, I just expect they found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them, it weren't no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could. When the first streak of day began to show, we tied up to a tow-head and a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth. We had mountains on the Missouri shore, and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we weren't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and upbound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman, and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself, she wouldn't sit down and watch a campfire, no sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the man was ready to start, and he believed they must have gone uptown to get a dog, and so they lost all that time. Or else we wouldn't be here on a tow-head sixteen or seventeen mile below the village. No, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't. When it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across, nothing in sight. So Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft, and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a footer more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it, for to hold it to its place. This was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly. The wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering or two, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming downstream to keep from getting run over. But we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats, unless we see we was in what they call a crossing, for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still a little underwater, so upbound boats didn't always run the channel, but hunted easy water. This second night we run between seven and eight hours with a current that was making over four miles an hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs, looking up at the stars. And we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it weren't often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next. Every night we passed towns, some of them way up on black hillsides, nothing but just the shiny bed of lights, not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There weren't a sound there, everybody was asleep. Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat, and sometimes I lifted a chicken that weren't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself, you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see Pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say anyway. Mornings before daylight I slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon or a musch melon or a pumpkin, or some new corn or things of that kind. Pap always said it weren't no harm to borrow things if he was meaning to pay them back some time, but the widow said it weren't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right, and Pap was partly right. So the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them any more, then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons or the cantaloupes or the musch melons or what. But towards daylight we got it all subtle satisfactory, and concluded to drop crab apples and Simmons. We weren't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way had come out, too, because crab apples ain't ever good, and Simmons wouldn't be right for two or three months yet. We shot a waterfowl now and then, that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round we lived pretty high. The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the draught take care of itself. When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high and rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, Hello, Jim, look a yonder! It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very distinct she was leaning over with part of her upper deck above water, and you could see every little chimbley guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flashes come. Well, it being away in the night and stormy and all so mysterious like, I felt just the way any other boy would have felt when I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little and see what there was there. So I says, Let's land on her, Jim! But Jim was dead against it at first. He says, I don't want to go fooling along her no wreck. We's doing blame well, and we better let blame well alone, and as the good book says, like is not days of watchmen on that wreck. Watchmen, your grandmother, I says, There ain't nothing to watch but the Texas and the pilot house, and do you reckon anybody is going to risk his life for a Texas and a pilot house such a night as this, when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute? Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try. And besides, I says, We might borrow something worth having out of the Captain's State Room. Cigars, I bet you, and cost five cents a piece solid cash. Steamboat Captains is always rich and gets sixty dollars a month and they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in your pocket. I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go buy this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't. He'd call it an adventure, that's what he'd call it, and he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act, and wouldn't he throw style into it? Wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you'd think it was Christopher Columbus discovering Kingdom Come. I wish Tom Sawyer was here. Jim, he grumbled a little, but give in. He said, We mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stopper, Derrick, and made fast there. The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to Labbard in the dark, towards the Texas, feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight and clump onto it, and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jiminy, away down through the Texas hall we see a light, and all in the same second we seemed to hear low voices in yonder. Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick and told me to come along. I says, All right, and was going to start for the raft, but just then I heard a voice wail out and say, Oh, please, don't, boys, I swear I won't ever tell. Another voice said, pretty loud, It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way before. You always want more in your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swore it, if you didn't, you'd tell. But this time you've said it just one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherous hound in this country. By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a violin with curiosity, and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so I won't either. I'm going to see what's going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage and crept aft in the dark till there weren't, but one state room twix me and the cross-hall of the Texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying, I'd like to, and I ordered to, I mean skunk, the man on the floor would shrivel up and say, Oh, please don't, Bill, I ain't ever going to tell. And every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say, Tee, you ain't. You never said no truer thing than that, you betcha. And once he said, hear him beg, and yet, if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him, he'd have killed us both. And what for? Just for nothing, just because we stood on our rights, that's what's for. But I lay you in to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill. Bill says, I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killing him. And didn't he kill old Hatfield, just the same way? And don't he deserve it? But I don't want him killed, and I've got my reasons for it. Bless your heart for them words, Jake Packard. I'll never forget you long as I live," says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on the nail and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motion-bill to come. I crawled fished as fast as I could, about two yards, but the boat slanted so that I couldn't make very good time. So to keep from getting run over and catched, I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The man came up, pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom he says, Here, come in here. And in he come and bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there with their hands on the ledge of the berth and talked. I couldn't see them, but I could tell where they was by the whiskey they'd been having. I was glad I didn't drink whiskey, but it wouldn't make much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn't have treed me, because I didn't breathe. I was too scared. And besides, a body couldn't breathe in here such talk. They talked low and earnest.  He says, He said he'll tell and he will. If we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've served him. Sure as you're born he'll turn state's evidence. Now you hear me? I'm for putting him out of his troubles. So am I, says Packard, very quiet. Blame it. I've sort of begun to think he wasn't. Well, then, that's all right. Let's go and do it. Hold on a minute. I ain't had my say yet. You listen to me. Shooting's good, but there's a quieter way if the thing has got to be done. But what I say is this. It ain't good sense to go courting around after a halter if you can get at what you're up to in some way that's just as good and at the same time don't bring you into no risks. Ain't that so? You bet it is. But how are you going to manage it this time? Well, my idea is this. We'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickens we've overlooked in the state rooms and shove for sure and hide the truck. Then we'll wait.  See, he'll be drowned and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that's a considerable sight better in killing of him. I'm unfavorable to killing a man as long as you can get around it. It ain't good sense. It ain't good morals. Ain't I right? Yes, I reckon you are. But suppose she don't break up and wash off? Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we? All right then, come along. So they started, and I lit out all in a cold sweat and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there, but I said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, Jim! And he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and I says, Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling round and moaning. There's a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck, there's one of them going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat, we can put all of them in a bad fix for the sheriff will get them. Quick, hurry! I'll hunt the labored side. You hunt the stabbered. You start at the raft, and—oh, my lordy, lordy, raft! There ain't no raft no more.  CHAPTER XIII Well, I catched my breath, and most fainted.  But it weren't no time to be sentimental, and we'd got to find that boat now, had to have it for ourselves. So we went to quaking and shaking down the stabbered side, and slow work it was too. Seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't believe he could go any further, so scared he hadn't hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on. If we get left on this wreck, we are in a fixed shore. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the Texas, and found it, and then scrambled long forward on the skylight, hanging on from shudder to shudder, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-haul door, there was the skiff, sure enough. I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would have been aboard her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone. But he jerked it in again, and says, heave that blame lantern out of sight, Bill. He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and sat down. It was Packard.  I couldn't hardly hang on to the shudders, I was so weak. But Bill says, Hold on. Did you go through him? No. Didn't you? No. So he's got his share of the cash yet. Well then, come along. No use to take truck and leave money. Say, wouldn't he suspicion what we're up to? Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along. So they got out and went in. The door slammed too because it was on the careen's side, and in a half a second I was in the boat and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope in a way we went. We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle box and past the stern. Then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up every last sign of her, and we was safe and noted. When we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the Texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. Then Jim manned the oars and we took out after our raft. Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men I reckon I hadn't had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was even for murderers to be in such a fix. I says to myself there ain't no telling, but I might come to be a murderer myself yet. Then how would I like it? So I says to Jim, The first light we see will land a hundred yards below it or above it in a place where it's a good hiding place for you and the skiff, and then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape so they can be hung when their time comes. But that idea was a failure. For pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down and never a light showed. Everybody in bed I reckon. We boomed along down the river watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain lit up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we made for it. It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We seen a light now way down to the right on shore, so I said I would go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told Jim to float along down and show a light when he judged he had gone about two mile and keep it burning till I come. Then I manned my oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more showed, up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore light and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double hull ferryboat. I skimmed around for the watchman, a wondering whereabouts he slept, and by and by I found him roosting on the bits forward, with his head down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves and begun to cry. He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way, but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says, Hello, what's up? Don't cry, Bob, what's the trouble? I says, Pat, ma'am, sis, and then I broke down. He says, Oh, dang it now, don't take on so. We all have to have our troubles, and this will come out all right. What's the matter with them? Well, they're there. Are you the watchman of the boat? Yes, he says, kind of pretty well satisfied like. I'm the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck hand, and sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame generous and good to Tom Dick and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does, but I've told him many a time that I wouldn't trade places with him for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm darned if I'd live two mile out of town where there ain't nothing ever going on, not for all his spondylics and as much more on top of it, says I, I broke in and says, these in an awful pack of trouble, and who is? Why, Pap and Mam and Sis and Miss Hooker, and if you take your ferryboat and go up there. Up where? Where are they? On the wreck. What wreck? Why, there ain't but one. Why, you don't mean the Walter Scott? Yes. Good land. What are they doing there for grace's sake? Well, they didn't go there a purpose. I bet they didn't. Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for them if they don't get off mighty quick. Why, how in the nation do they ever get into such a scrape? Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a visiting up there to the town. Yes, Booth's Landing. Go on. She was a visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman and the horse ferry to stay all night at her friend's house. Miss, what you may call her, I just remember her name. And they lost their steering oar and swung around and went a floating down stern first about two miles and saddlebags on the wreck.  But Miss Hooker, she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our training-skowl. And it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it. And so we saddlebags'd. But all of us was saved but Bill Whipple, and oh he was the best critter I most wished had been me, I do. My, George, it's the beatin'est thing I ever struck. And then what did you all do? Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make nobody here. So Pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and Miss Hooker, she said, if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle and heat-fix the thing. I made the land about a mile below and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do something, but they said, why, in such a night and such a current? There ain't no sense in it. Go for the steam-fairy. Now, if you'll go and buy Jackson I'd like to, and blame it, I don't know, but I will. But who in the ding nations are going to pay for it? Do you reckon you're Pap? Why, that's all right. Miss Hooker, she told me, in particular, that her uncle hornback—great guns. Is he her uncle? Look at here. You break for that light over Yondiway, and turn out west when you get there, and about a quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern. Tell him to dart you out to Jim Hornbacks, and he'll foot the bill.  Tell him I'll have his niece all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself now.  I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among the wood boats, for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferry boat start. But, take it all around, I was feeling rather comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would have done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these Rapscallians, because Rapscallians and deadbeats as the kind of the widow and good people takes the most interest in. Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky and sliding along down. A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there weren't much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn't any answer, all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it I could. Then here comes the ferry boat, so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long downstream slant, and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I laid on my oars and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her Uncle Hornback would want them, and then pretty soon the ferry boat give it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went to boom and down the river. It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up, and when it did show it looked like it was a thousand miles off. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east, so we struck for an island and hid the raft and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people. End of Chapter 13 This is Chapter 14 of Huckleberry Finn. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 14. A general good time. The harem. French. By and by when we got up we turned over the truck, the gang had stole off in the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spy glass, and three boxes of seagars. We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. The seagars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods, talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferry boat, and I said these kinds of things was adventures, but he said he didn't want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the Texas, and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died, because he judged it was all up with him anyway it could be fixed, for if he didn't get saved he would get drowned, and if he did get saved whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him south. Sure! Well, he was right. He was most always right. He had an uncommon level head for an eager. I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other Your Majesty, and Your Grace, and Your Lordship, and so on, instead of Mr. and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says, I didn't know they were so many of them. I ain't heard about none of them, scarcely, but old King Solomon, unless you count them kings that's in your pack of your cards, how much do a king get? Get? I says. Why? They get a thousand dollars a month if they want it. They can have just as much as they want. Everything belongs to them.  And what have they got to do, huck? They don't do nothing. Why, how you talk? They just set around. No, is that so? Of course it is. They just set around, except maybe when there's a war, then they go to the war.  Do you hear noise? We skipped out and looked. But it weren't nothing but the flutter of a steamboat's wheel way down, coming round the point. So we come back. Yes, as I—and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the Parliament.  But mostly they hang around the harem. Round which? Harem. What's the harem? The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? Solomon had one. He had about a million wives. Why, yes, that's so. I had done forgot it. A harem's a balden house, I reckon. Most likely they has rackety times in the nursery. And I reckon the wives quarrel's considerable, and that creased the racket. Yet they say Solomon the wisest man to ever live. I don't take no stock and at. Because why would a wise man want to live in the midst of such a blim-blamin' all the time? No, deed he wouldn't. A wise man had taken Bill a byler factory, and then he could sit down the byler factory when he want to rest. Well, but he was the wisest man, anyway, because the widow she told me so, her own self. I don't care what the widow say. He warn't no wise man another. He had some of their dad-fetchin' his ways I ever see. Does you know about that child that he was going to chop in two? Yes, the widow told me all about it. Well, then, warn't that the beatin'est notion in the world? You just takin' a look at it a minute. There's the stump. There. That's one of the women. Here's you. That's the other one. I, Solomon. And this year the dollar bills the child. Before he claims it, what does I do? Does I shin' round mungs the neighbors and find out which one you'd to bill and do belong to, and hand it over to the right one, all safe and sound, the way that anybody that any gumption would? No. I'd takin' a whack to billin' two, and give halfin' it to you, and another half to the other woman. That's the way Solomon's gonna do with the child. Now, I want to ask you, what's the use of the half a bill? Can't buy nothin' with it. What is the use of a half a child? I wouldn't give a durin' for a million of them. But hang it, Jim. You clean missed the point. Blame it. You've missed it a thousand mile. Who? Me? Go long. Don't talk to me about your pants. I reckon I know sense when I seize it. And there ain't no sense in such durin' as that. Dispute warn't about a half a child. Dispute was about a whole child.  Don't talk to me about Solomon, Huck. I know him by the back. But I tell you you don't get the point. Blame the point. I reckon I know what I know's. And mind you, the real point is down further. It's down deeper. It lays in the way Solomon was raised. You take a man that's got only one or two children. Is that man going to be wasteful of children? No, he ain't. He can't afford it. He know how to value him. But you take a man that's got about five million children run around the house and it's different. He is soon chop a child in two as a cat. There's plenty more. A child or two, more or less, weren't no consequence to Solomon that fatch him.  If he got a notion in his head once, there weren't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talk about other things and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that got his head cut off in France a long time ago, and about his little boy the Dolphin. That would be a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there. Poor little chap. But some says he got out and got away and come to America. That's good. But he'll be pretty lonesome. There ain't no kings here, is there, Huck? No. Then he can't get no situation. What he going to do? Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police. Some of them learns people how to talk French. Why, Huck, don't the French people talk the same way we does? No, Jim, you couldn't understand a word they said, not a single word. Well, now I'll be ding-busted. How did that come? I don't know, but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. I suppose a man was to come to you and say, Polly-Vu, Francie, what would you think? I wouldn't think nothing. I'd take and bust him over the head. That is, if he weren't white. I wouldn't allow no nigger to call me that. Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know how to talk French? Well, then, why couldn't he say it? Why, he is saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it. Well, it's a blame ridiculous way, and I don't want to hear no more about it. There ain't no sense in it. Look here, Jim, does a cat talk like we do? No, a cat don't. Well, does a cow? No, a cow don't nether.  No, they don't. It's natural and right for them to talk different from each other, ain't it? Of course. And hate it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us? Why, most surely it is. Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that. Is a cat a man, hook? No. Well, then, there ain't no sense in a cat talking like a man.  No, she ain't nether of them. Well, then, she ain't got no business to talk like either one or the other of them. Is a Frenchman a man? Yes? Well, then. Blame it. Why don't he talk like a man? You answer me that. I see it weren't no use wasting words.  So I quit. End of Chapter 14 This is Chapter 15 of Huckleberry Finn. This Libre Box, according, is in the public domain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 15. Huck loses the raft. In the fog. Huck finds the raft. Trash. We judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in. And that was what we was after. We would sell the raft, and get on a steamboat, and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble. Well, the second night a fog began to come on, and we made for a tow-head to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in the fog. But when I paddled ahead in the canoe with a line to make fast, there weren't anything but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut-bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots in a way she went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute, it seemed to me. And then there weren't no raft in sight. You couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke, but she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them. As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the tow-head. That was all right as far as it went, but the tow-head weren't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was going than the dead man. Thinks I—it won't do to paddle. First I know I'll run into the bank or a tow-head or something. I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hand still at such a time. I whooped and listened, a way down there somewhere I hear a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I weren't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. And the next time I was heading away to the left of it. Not gaining on it much either, for I was flying around this way and that and other, but it was going straight ahead all the time. I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I hears the whoop behind me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around. I throwed the paddle down, I heard the whoop again, it was behind me yet, but in a different place. It kept coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, and I know the current had swung the canoe's head downstream, and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other Raphman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, but nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-boomin' down on a cut-bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared the current was tearing by them so swift. In another second or two it was solid whiten still again.  I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut-bank was an island, and Jim had gone down to other side of it. It weren't no tow-head that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island. It might be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide. I kept quiet as my ears cocked about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour, but you don't ever think of that.  If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night you try it once, you'll see. Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then. At last I hears the answer a long ways off and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it. And directly I judged I'd got into a nest of tow-heads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd heard the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't long losing the whoops down amongst the tow-heads, and I only tried to chase them a little while anyway because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. You never know to sound dodge around so and swap places so quick and so much. I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river, and so I judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing. It was floating a little faster than on what I was. Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't hear no sign of a whoop no-wares. I reckon Jim had fetched up on a snag maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired so I laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to go to sleep, of course, but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it, so I thought I would take just one little cat-nap. But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was. I thought I was dreaming, and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week. It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and thickest kind of timber on both banks, just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars. I looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water. I took after it, but when I got to it it weren't nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast together. Then I see another speck and chase that, then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft. When I got to it Jim was sitting there with his head down between his knees asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. The other oar was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt, so she'd had a rough time. I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft and began to gap and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says, Oh, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up? Goodness gracious, is that you, Huck? And you ain't dead? You ain't drowned? You used back again? It's too good for true, honey. It's too good for true.  Let me feel you.  Use back again. Lives in the sound. And just the same old Huck, the same old Huck, thank to goodness. What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a drinkin'? Drinking? Has I been a drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a drinkin'? Well, then, what's make you talk so wild? How does I talk wild? How? Why, ain't you been talking about my comin' back and all that stuff as if I'd been gone away? Huck, Huck, Finn, you look me in the eye. Look me in the eye. Ain't you been gone away? Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I ain't been gone anywheres. Where would I go to? Well, looky here, boss. There's somethin' wrong, there is. Is I me or who is I? Is I here or what is I? Now, that's what I want to know. Well, I think you're here plain enough, but I think you're a tango-headed old fool, Jim. I is, is I? Well, you answer me this. Didn't you toad out the line in the canoe to make fast to the tow-head? No, I didn't. What tow-head? I ain't seen no tow-head. I ain't seen no tow-head. Looky here. Didn't the line pull loose and the raft go a humming down the river and leave you in the canoe behind in the fog? What fog? Why, the fog. The fog that's been round all night. And didn't you whoop and didn't I whoop and tell we got mixed up in the islands and one of us got lost and the other one was just as good as lost? Casey, he didn't know where he was. And didn't I bust up again a lotter them islands and have a terrible time and most get drowneded. Ain't that so, boss? Ain't it so? You answer me that. Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I ain't seen no fog nor no islands, nor no troubles nor nothing. I've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago and I reckon I'd done the same.  Dad, fetch it, how is I going to dream all that in ten minutes? Well, hang it all, you did dream it because there didn't any of it happen. But, Huck, it's all just as plain to me as it don't make no difference how plain it is. There ain't nothing in it. I know because I've been here all the time. Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but sat there studying over it. Then he says, Well, then, Huck, I reckon I did dream it, Huck, but dog, my cats, if it ain't the powerfulest dream I ever see.  Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes. But this one was a staven dream. Tell me all about it, Jim. So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start in and interpret it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first tow-head stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them, they'd just take us into bad luck instead of keeping us out of it. The lot of tow-heads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river which was the Free States and wouldn't have no more trouble. It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now. Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim, I says. But what does these things stand for? It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed ore. You could see them first rate now. Jim looked at the trash, then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the things straightened around, he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says, What do they stand for? I was going to tell you. When I got all wore out would work and would be calling for you and went to sleep, my heart was most broke because you was lost. And I didn't care no more what become mean and the raft.  I'm so thankful. And all you was thinking about was how you could make a fool of old Jim with a lie. That truck there is trash.  And he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger. But I'd done it. And I weren't ever sorry for it afterwards neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks. And I wouldn't done that one if I'd known it would make him feel that way. End of Chapter 15 This is Chapter 16 of Huckleberry Finn. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 16 Expectation, a white lie, floating currency, running by Cairo, swimming ashore. We slept most all day and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle and a tall flagpole at each end. There was a power of style about her. It amounted to something being a rassman on such a craft as that. We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both sides. You couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked about Cairo and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there weren't but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said, if the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim and me, too. So the question was, what to do? I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell them Pap was behind, coming along with a trading scowl, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. There weren't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it, because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it. But if he missed it, he'd be in a slave country again, and no more show for freedom.  But it weren't. It was jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs. So he sat down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him all over-trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can tell you it made me all over-trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I began to get it through my head that he was most free. And who was to blame for it? Why, me. I couldn't get that out of my conscience know-how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest. I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did, and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I want to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner. But it weren't no use. Conscience, up and says, every time. But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could have paddled ashore and told somebody. That was so. I couldn't get around that no way. That was where it pinched.  What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book. She tried to learn you your manners. She tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That's what she done. I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself. And Jim was fidgeting up and down past me. Neither of us could keep still. Every time he danced round and says, Dazz, Cairo! He went through me like a shot, and I thought, if it was Cairo, I reckoned I would die of miserableness. Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state, he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived. And then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn't sell them they'd get an abolitionist to go and steal them. It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dare to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ale. I think, Si, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children, children that belonged to a man I didn't even know, a man that hadn't ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that. It was such a lowering of him. My conscience got to stirring me up hot or never, until at last I says to it, Let up on me. It ain't too late yet. I'll paddle ashore at the first light and tell. I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a light and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings out, We safe, Huck, we safe. Jump up and crack your heels. That's the good old Cairo at last. I just knows it. I says, I'll take the canoe and go and see Jim. It mightn't be, you know. He jumped up and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in the bottom for me to sit on and give me the paddle.  I's a free man, and I couldn't ever been free if it hadn't been for Huck. Huck done it. Jim won't ever forget you, Huck, used the best friend Jim's ever had and used the only friend old Jim's got now. I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him. But when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow then, and I weren't right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I weren't. When I was fifty yards off Jim says, There you goes, the old true Huck, the only white gentleman to ever kept his promise to old Jim. Well, I just felt sick. But I says I got to do it. I can't get out of it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and I prompt. One says, What's that, Yanda? Piece of a raft, I says. Do you belong in it? Yes, sir. Any men on it? Only one, sir. Well, there's five niggers run off tonight up Yanda, above the head of the bend. Is your man white or black? I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but words wouldn't come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I weren't man enough. Hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening, so I just give up trying and up and says, He's white! I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves. I wish you would, says I. Because it's Pap that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick, and so is Mam and Marianne. Oh, that devil! We're in a hurry, boy, but I suppose we've got to. Come buckle to your paddle, and let's get along. I buckle to my paddle, and they laid to their oars. When we'd made a stroke or two, I says, Pap will be mighty much a-bleached to you. I can tell you, everybody goes away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it by myself. Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter with your father? It's the, uh, the, uh, the, well, in anything much. They stopped pulling.  One says, Boy, that's a lie. What is the matter with your Pap? Answer up square now, and it'll be better for you. I will, sir. I will, honest. But don't leave us, please. It's the, uh, the gentleman if you'll only pull ahead and let me heave you the headline. You won't have to come in near the raft. Please do. Set her back, John. Set her back, says one. They backed water. Keep away, boy. Keep to the Lord. Confounded I just expect the wind has blowed it to us. Your Pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious well. Why didn't you come out and say so? You want to spread it all over? Well, says I, blustering. I've told everybody before, and they just went away and left us. Poor devil, there's something in that. We were right down sorry for you, but we—well, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. Look here. I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. It will be long after sun-up, then, and when you ask for help, you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever.  Now we're trying to do you a kindness, so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. It wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is. It's only a wood-yard. Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's in pretty hard luck. Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold-piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you, but my kingdom—it won't do to fool with smallpox, don't you see? Hold on, Parker," says the other man. Here's a twenty to put on the board for me. Goodbye, boy. You do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll be all right. That's all, my boy. Goodbye. Goodbye. If you see any runaway niggers, you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it. Goodbye, sir," says I. I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I can help it. They went off, and I got aboard the raft feeling bad and low because I knowed very well I'd done wrong, and I see it weren't no use for me to try to learn to do right. A body that don't get started right when he's little ain't got no show. When the pinch comes, there ain't nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on. Suppose you had done right, and give Jim up. Would you have felt better than what you do now? No, says I. I'd feel bad. I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then says I. What's the use you learnin' to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that, so I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. I went into the wigwam. Jim weren't there. I looked all round. He weren't anywhere. I says, Jim! Here I is, huck. Is day out of sight yet? Don't talk loud. He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I told him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. He says, I was a-listening to all the talk, and I slips into the river, and was going to shove for sure if they come aboard. Then I was going to swim to the raft again when they was gone. But, lozzy, how you did fool him, huck, that was the smartest dodge! I tell you, child, I speck it, save old Jim. Old Jim ain't going to forget you for that, honey. Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise. Twenty dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steam boat now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states. He said twenty mile more won't far for the raft to go, but he wished we was already there. Towards daybreak we tied up and Jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles and getting all ready to quit rafting. That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town way down in a left-hand bend. I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out in the river with a skiff setting a trot line. I ranged up and says, Mr., is that town Cairo? Cairo? No. You must be blame-fool. What town is it, Mr.? If you want to know, go find out.  I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never mind. Cairo would be the next place I reckoned. We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again. But it was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said. I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a tow-head tolerable close to the left-hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I says, Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night. He says, Don't let's talk about a hug.  I all suspected that rattlesnake skin weren't done with its work. I wish I'd never seen that snakeskin, Jim. I do wish I'd never laid eyes on it. It ain't your fault, Huck. You didn't know. Don't you blame yourself about it. When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water, inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular muddy, so it was all up with Cairo. We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore. We couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. There weren't no way to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work. And when we went back to the raft about dark, the canoe was gone. We didn't say a word for a good while. There weren't anything to say. We both knowed well enough it was some work of the rattlesnake skin. So what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck, and keep on fetching it too, till we knowed enough to keep still. By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there weren't no way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a canoe to go back in. We weren't going to borrow it when there weren't anybody around, the way Pap would do, for that might set people after us. So we shoved out after dark on the raft. Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a snakeskin after all that that snakeskin done for us will believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore, but we didn't see no rafts laying up, so we went along during three hours and more. Well, the night got gray and rather thick, which is the next meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then, and along comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern and judged she would see it. Upstream boats didn't generally come close to us. They go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs. But nights like this they bull-write up the channel against the whole river. We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching.  Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and shave us, but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it. But all of a sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a pow-wow of cussing and whistling of steam. And as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she came smashing straight through the raft. I dived, and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and I wanted to have plenty of room. I could always stay under water a minute, this time I reckon I stayed under a minute and a half, and then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of my nose and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current, and of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen. So now she was churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, and how I could hear her. I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer. So I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was treading water, and struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that I was in a crossing. So I changed off and went that way. It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings, so I was a good long time in getting over. I made a safe landing and clumped up the bank. I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a big old-fashioned double-log house before I noticed it. I was going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and barking at me, and anode better than to move another peg. CHAPTER XVII An evening call, the farm in Arkansas, interior decorations, Stephen dowling bots, political effusions. In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out and says, Be done, boys. Who's there? I says, It's me. Who's me? George Jackson, sir. What do you want? I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me. What are you prowling around here this time of night for, hey? Weren't prowling around, sir. I fell overboard off of the steamboat. Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say your name was? George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy. Look here, if you're telling the truth, you needn't be afraid. Nobody will hurt you. But don't try to budge, stand right where you are. Rouse out Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson? Is there anybody with you? No, sir. Nobody. I heard the people stirring round in the house now and see a light.  Ain't you got any sense? Put it on the floor, behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are ready, take your places. Already! Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepardsons? No, sir. Never heard of them. Well, that may be so, and it may. Now, already, step forward, George Jackson.  If there's anybody with you, let him keep back. If he shows himself, he'll be shot. Come along now. Come slow. Push the door, open yourself. Just enough to squeeze in, you hear? I didn't hurry. I couldn't if I'd wanted to. I took one slow step at a time, and there weren't a sound. Only I thought I could hear my heart. The dogs were as still as the humans. But they followed a little behind me. When I got to the three locked door steps, I heard them, unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed a little and a little more till somebody said, There, that's enough.  I'd done it, but I judged they would take it off. The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute. Three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you. The oldest, gray and about sixty, the other two, thirty or more, all of them fine and handsome, and the sweetest old gray-headed lady and back of her two young women, which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says, There, I reckon it's all right. Come in. As soon as I was in, the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows. There weren't none on the side. They held the candle and took a good look at me, and all said, Why, he ain't a Shepardson? No, there ain't any Shepardson about him. Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it, it was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself. But the old lady says, Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be, and don't you reckon it may be he's hungry? True for you, Rachel, I forgot.  Buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him, and dress him up in some of yours that's dry. Buck looked about as old as me, thirteen or fourteen or long there, though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a shirt, and he was very frowsy-headed. He came in, gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. He says, Ain't they no Shepardsons around? I said, No, it was a false alarm. Well, he says, if they'd have been some, I reckon I'd got one. They all laughed, and Bob says, Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all. You've been so slow in coming. Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right, I'm always kept down. I don't get no show. Never mind, Buck, my boy, says the old man, You'll have shown off all in good time, don't you fret about that.  When we got upstairs to his room, he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell me about a blue-jay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out, and I said, I didn't know. I hadn't heard about it before, no way. Well, guess, he says. How am I going to guess this, when I never heard tell of it before? But you can guess can't you, it's just as easy. Which candle, I says? Why, any candle, he says. I don't know where he was, says I. Where was he? Why, he was in the dark, that's where he was. Well, if you knowed where he was, would you ask me for? Why, blame me, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have boom and times. They don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a dog, and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do you like to comb up Sundays and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I don't, but Mom, she makes me. Can't find these old britches. I reckon I'd better put them on, but I'd rather not. It's so warm. Are you all ready? All right. Come along, old host. Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk. That is what they had for me down there. And there ain't nothing better that ever I've come across yet.  They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how pappin' me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansas, and my sister Marianne run off and got married, and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them, and he weren't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there weren't nobody but just me and Papp left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing on account of his troubles, so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard, and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, dreaded all I had forgot what my name was, so I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says, Can you spell, Buck? Yes, he says. I bet you can't spell my name, says I. I bet you what you dare, I can, says he. All right, says I. Go ahead. G-E-O-R-G-E-J-A-X-O-N. There now, he says. Well, says I. You done it. But I didn't think you could. It ain't no slouch of a name to spell right off without studying. I set it down private, because somebody might want me to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy with it, and rattle it off like I was used to it.  I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town. There weren't no bed in the parlour, nor a sign of a bed, but heaps of parlours and towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick. Sometimes they washed them over with red water paint that they call Spanish Brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock in the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick, and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been long and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her. Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other, and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a couple of big wild turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they weren't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was underneath. This table had a cover made out of beautiful oil cloth, with a red and blue spread eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all away from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact on each corner of the table.  One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry, but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn-book and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too, not bagged down in the middle and busted like an old basket. They had pictures hung on the walls, mainly Washington's and Lafayette's, and Battles, and Highland Mary's, and one called Signing the Declaration. There was some that they called Crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever seen before, blacker, mostly, than in its common.  Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird lying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said, I shall never hear thy sweet cheer up more alas? There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks, and she had an open letter in one hand with black ceiling wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said, and art thou gone, yes, thou art gone alas? These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fantods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckon that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon, and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms. But, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birth they come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. This young girl kept a scrapbook when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Botts, that fell down a well and was drowned. Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts, deceased. Did young Stephen sicken, and did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, and did the mourners cry? No. Such was not the fate of young Stephen Dowling Botts, though sad hearts round him thickened, twas not from sickness shots. No whooping cough did wrack his frame, nor measles drear with spots. Not these impaired the sacred name of Stephen Dowling Botts. Despised love struck not with woe that head of curly knots, nor stomach troubles laid him low, young Stephen Dowling Botts. Oh, no! Then list with tearful eye whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly by falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him, alas it was too late. His spirit was gone for to sport aloft in the realms of the good and great. If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen there ain't no telling what she could have done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think. He said she could slap down a line and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one and go ahead. She weren't particular. She could write about anything you'd choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died or a woman died or a child died she would be on hand with her tribute before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, and then the undertaker. The undertaker never got in the head of Emmeline but once and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name which was Whistler. She weren't ever the same after that. She never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long. Poor thing.  I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and weren't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive and it didn't seem right that there weren't nobody to make some about her now she was gone. So I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she soured there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly. Well, as I was saying about the parlor there was beautiful curtains on the windows, white with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing The Last Link Is Broken and play The Battle of Prague on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered and most had carpets on the floors and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. It was a double house and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better, and weren't the cooking good and just bushels of it, too?