CHAPTER ONE OF THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBURY FINN. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished. Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By order of the author, per G.G. Chief of Ordinance. Explanatory. In this book a number of dialects are used to it. The Missouri Negro dialect, the extremist form of Backwood's Southwestern dialect, the Ordinary Pike County dialect, and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork, but painstakingly end with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. The author. Huckleberry Finn. Seen? The Mississippi Valley. Time? Forty to fifty years ago. CHAPTER ONE. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I'd never seen anybody but Lide one time or another without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly, Tom's Aunt Polly she is, and Mary and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers as I said before. Now the way that the book winds up is this. Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars a piece, all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out in interest, and it fetched us a dollar, a day, a piece, all the year round, more than a body could tell what to do with. The widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me, but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal, regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways, and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar hogs head again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom saw her, he hunted me up, and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable, so I went back. The widow, she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. Well then the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the vitals. Though there warn't really anything to matter with him, that is, nothing, only everything, was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different. Things get mixed up, and the juice kinda swaps around, and the things go better. After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bull rushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him, but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time, so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock and dead people. Pretty soon I wanted to smoke and asked the widow to let me, but she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That's the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was, bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody being gone, you see, yet finding the power to fall with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too, of course that was all right, because she done it herself. Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable, slim old maid with goggles on, had just come to live with her and took a set at me now with a spelling book. She worked me middle and hard for about an hour and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't have stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry, and don't scrunch up like that Huckleberry, set up straight. And pretty soon she would say, don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry, why don't you try to behave? Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres. All I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said. She said she wouldn't say it for the whole world. She was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so because it would only make trouble and wouldn't do no good. Now she had got a start. She went on and told me all about the good place. She said all the body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it, but I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together. Miss Watson, she kept pecking at me, and he got tiresome and lonesome.  I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I sat down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful, and I heard an owl away off, hoo-hooing about somebody that was dead, and a whip or wheel, and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die, and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then, away out in the woods, I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind, and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night, grieving. I got so downhearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off, and it lit in the candle, and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign, and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared, and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times, and crossed my breast every time, and then I tied up a little lock in my hair with a thread to keep witches away, but I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've lost a harsh shoe that you've found, instead of kneeling it up over the door, but I hadn't never heard anybody say it was any way to keep off the bad luck when you'd killed a spider. I sat down again, shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke, for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock way off in the town go, boom, boom, boom, twelve licks, and all still again, stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees, something was stirring. I sat still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a meow, meow, down there. That was good, says I, meow, meow, as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window onto the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and sure enough there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me. CHAPTER II We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrooched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger named Jim was sitting in the kitchen door. We could see him pretty plain because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out a minute, listening. Then he says, Who da? He listened some more. Then he came tiptoeing down and stood right between us. We could have touched him nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there weren't a sound, and we was there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dashing scratched it, and then my ear begun to itch, and next my back right between my shoulders seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty time since. If you are with the quality or out of funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy, if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says, Say, who is you? Where is you? Dog, my cats, if I didn't hear something. Well, I know what I was going to do. I was going to sit down here and listen till I hear it again. So he sat down on the ground, twerks to me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes, but I dessin' scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I don't know how I was going to sit still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes, but it seemed to sit longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckon I couldn't stand it more than a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy. Next he begun to snore, and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom, he made a sign to me, kind of a little noise with his mouth, and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun, but I said no, he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come, but Tom wanted to risk it, so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away, but nothing would do Tom, but he must crawl to where Jim was on his hands and knees and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while. Everything was so still and lonesome. As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterwards, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance and rode him all over the state, and then set him under the tree again and hung his hat on a limb to show who'd done it. And next time Jim told it, he said they rode him down to New Orleans, and after that, every time he told it, he spread it more and more. Till by and by, he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with them miles open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire, but whenever one was talking and letting on to know about such things, Jim would happen in and say, hmm, what you know about witches, and that nigger was carked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil gave him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to, just by saying something to it, but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece, but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it.  Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks maybe, and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine, and down by the village was the river a whole mile broad and awful still in grand. We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys hid in the old tan yard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two-mile-and-a-half to the big scar on the hillside and went ashore. We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep a secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't have noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom said, Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everyone that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood. Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band and never tell any of the secrets.  And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did, he must be sued, and if he'd done it again, he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever. Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he had got it out of his own head. He said some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books and robber books and every gang that was high-toned had it. Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers said, Here's Huck Finn, he ain't got no family. What you going to do about him? Well, ain't he got a father? says Tom Sawyer. Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he ain't been seen in these parts for a year or more. They talked it over and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do. Everybody was stumped and set still. I was most ready to cry, but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson. They could kill her. Everybody said, Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in. Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper. Now, says Ben Rogers, what's the line of business of this gang? Nothing but robbery and murder, Tom said. But who are we going to rob? Houses or cattle or stuff? Stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery. It's burglary, said Tom Sawyer. We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road with masks on and kill the people and take their watches and money.  Oh, certainly it's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed. Ransomed? What's that? I don't know, but that's what they do. I've seen it in books. So of course, that's what we've got to do. But how can we do it if we don't know what it is? Why blame it all? We've got to do it. Did not tell you it's in the books. Do you want to go to do it different from what's in the books and get things all muddled up? Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer. But how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? That's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is? Well, I don't know. But perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead. Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you say that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death and to bother some lot they'll be to eating up everything and always trying to get loose. Oh, you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them ready to shoot them down if they move a peg? A guard? Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't the body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here? Because it ain't in the books. So that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular or don't you? That's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn them anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir. We'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way. All right, I don't mind. But I say it's a full way anyhow.   Kill the women? No. Nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave and you're always as polite as pie to them, and by and by they fall in love with you and never want to go home anymore. Well, if that's the way, I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Might as soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellows waiting to be ransomed that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say. Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now. Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now. And when they wake him up, he was scared and cried and said he wanted to go home to his maw and didn't want to be a robber anymore. So they all made fun of him and called him a crybaby. And that made him mad. And he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom gave him a five cents to keep quiet and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people. Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much only Sundays. And so he wanted to begin next Sunday. But all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday. And that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could. And then we elected Tom Sawyer, first captain, and Joe Harper, second captain of the gang. And so started home. I clumped up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up in clay, and I was all tired. End of chapter two. Chapter three of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter three. Well, I got a good going over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes. But the widow, she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I would bathe a while if I could. Then Miss Watson, she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it weren't so. I tried it. Once I got a fishline, but no hooks. It weren't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way. I sat down one time back in the woods and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Win get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back a silver snuff box that was stole?  No, I says to myself. There ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts. This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant. I must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself. This was including Miss Watson as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it except for the other people. So at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it anymore and just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way that makes the body's mouth water, but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there won't no help for him anymore. I thought it all out and reckoned I would belong to the widows if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he wasn't going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant and so kind of low down in ordinary. Pa, he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me. I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always wail me when he was sober and could get his hands on me, though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river, grounded, about twelve miles above town, so people said. They judged it was him anyway, said this rounded man was just his size and was ragged and had uncommon long hair, which was all like Pa. But they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it weren't much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I weren't comfortable long, because I happen to think of something I knowed mighty well that a rounded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed then that this weren't Pa, but a woman dressed up in man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market. But we never hibed any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs ingots, and he called the turnips and stuff jewelry, and we would go to the cave and pow wow over what we had done and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blaze and stick which he called a slogan, which was to sign for the gang to get together. And then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-Rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants and six hundred camels and over a thousand sumptomules, all loaded down with diamonds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, so we would lay an ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot as scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready. He never could go after a turnip cart, but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though there was only lathe and broomsticks, and you might scour them till you rotted, and then they weren't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-Rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade, and when we got the word, we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there weren't no Spaniards and A-Rabs, and there wasn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday school picnic, and only a primer class at that. We busted it up and chased the children up the holler, but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Joe Harper got a hymn-book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no diamonds, and I told Tom Saw her so. He said there was loads of them there anyway, and he said there was A-Rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them then? He said if I weren't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants, and treasure, and so on. But we had enemies, which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school just out of spite. I said, all right, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numbskull. Why, said he, a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big a round as a church. Well, I says, suppose we got some genies to help us.  How are you going to get them? I don't know. How do they get them? Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in with the thunder and lightning and ripping around and the smoker rolling, and everything they are told to do, they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots and belting a Sunday school superintendent over the head with it or any other man. Who makes them tear around so? Moah, whoever rubbers the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubbers the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace 40 miles long out of diamonds and fill it full of chewing gum or whatever they want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it, and they've got to do it before sun up next morning too, and more. They've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand. Well, says I, I think there are a pack of flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves instead of fooling them away like that. And what's more, if I was one of them, I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp. How you talk, Huck Finn, why you'd have to come when he rubbed it whether you wanted to or not? What? And I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right then, I would come, but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country. Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know anything somehow, perfect saphead. I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I recollected I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed until I sweat like an engine, calculating to build the palace and sell it. But it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckon he believed in the A-rabbs and the elephants, but as for me, I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday school. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This Sleabery Vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 Well, three or four months run along and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, but I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired, I played hooky, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school, the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they weren't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the wood sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me. One morning I happened to turn over the salt cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck. But Miss Watson was in ahead of me and crossed me off.  What a mess you are always making. The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren't going to keep off the bad luck. I know that well enough. I started out after breakfast feeling worried and shaky and wondering where it was going to fall on me and what it was going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind. So I never tried to do anything but just poked along low spirited and on the watch out. I went down to the front garden and clump over the style where you go through the highboard fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the style a while and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in after standing around so. I couldn't make it out. It was very curious somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot heel made with big nails to keep off the devil. I was up in a second and shining down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thackers as quick as I could get there. He said, Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest? No, sir, I says. Is there some for me? Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night. Over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it, you'll spend it. No, sir, I says. I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all. Nor the six thousand other. I want you to take it. I want to give it to you. The six thousand at all. He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says, Why, what can you mean, my boy? I says, Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it, won't you? He says, Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter? Please take it, says I, and don't ask me nothing. Then I won't have to tell no lies. He studied a while, and then he says, Oh, I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me, not give it. That's the correct idea. Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over and says, There, you see it says, For a consideration. That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it. So I signed and left. Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which he had took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him Pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use. He said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass know-how even if the brass didn't show because it was so slick it felt greasy and so that would tell on it every time. I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge. I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it and said he wouldn't manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night. And next morning you couldn't see no brass and it wouldn't feel greasy no more so anybody in town would take it in a minute let alone a hair-ball. Well I know the potato would do that before but I had forgot it. Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim and Jim told it to me. He says your old father don't know yet what he are going to do.  The best way is to rest easy and let the old man take his own way. There's two angels hovering round about him. One of them is white and shiny and the other one is black. The white one gets him to go right a little while but then the black one sail in and bust it up. A body can't tell yet which one going to fetch him at the last but you is right. You're going to have considerable trouble in your life and considerable joy. Sometimes you're going to get hurt and sometimes you're going to get sick but every time you're going to get well again. There's two gals flying about you and your life. One of them is light and the other one is dark. One is rich and the other is poor. You're going to marry the poor one first and the rich one by and by. You want to keep away from the water as much as you can and don't run no risk because it's down in the bills that you're going to get hung. When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there sat Pap his own self. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This Sleevery Vox recording is in the public domain.  Then I turned around and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time. He tanned me so much. I reckon I was scared now too, but in a minute I see I was mistaken. That is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected. But right away, after I see, I weren't scared of him worth bothering about. He was almost fifty and looked at. His hair was long and tangled and greasy and hung down and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. He was all black, no gray. So was his long, mixed up whiskers.  It was white, not like another man's white, but white to make a body sick. A white to make a body's flesh crawl. A tree-toed white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes, just rags. That was all. He had one ankle rested on to the knee. The boot on that foot was busted and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor, an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. I stood a-looking at him. He sat there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up, so he had come in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says, Star-chie clothes vary.  Maybe I am. Maybe I ain't.  You put on considerable many frills since I've been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated too, they say. Can read and write?  I'll take it out of you.   The widow, she told me. The widow, hey? And who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business? Nobody never told her. Well, I'll learn her how to meddle.  I learned people to bring up a boy to put on ass over his father and let on to be better in what he is.  Your mother couldn't read and she couldn't write another before she died. None of the family couldn't before they died.   Say, let me hear you read. I took up a book and began something about General Washington and the wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says, it's so you can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now, lookie here, you stopped that puttin' on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty, and if I catch you about that school, I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son. He took up a little blue and yellower picture of some cows and a boy and says, what's this? It's somethin' they give me for learnin' my lessons good. He tore it up and says, I'll give you somethin' better. I'll give you a cow hide. He sat there, rumblin' and growlin' a minute.    I never see such a son. I bet I'll take some of these frills outta you before I'm done with you.  Hey, say you're rich. Hey, how's that? They lie, that's how. Looky here, man, how you talk to me?   I heard about a way down the river, too. That's why I come. You get me that money tomorrow. I want it. I ain't got no money. It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You get it? I want it.  You ask Judge Thacker. He'll tell you the same. All right. I'll ask him, and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it. I ain't got only a dollar, and I want that, too. It don't make no difference what you want it for. You just shell it out. He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going downtown to get some whiskey, said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed, he put his head in again, and cussed me for puttin' on frills, and tryin' to be better than him. And when I reckoned he was gone, he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop that. Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bully-ragged him, and tried to make him give up the money, but he couldn't. And then he swore he'd make the law force him. The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian. But it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man. So he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it. Said he'd rather not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business. That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he cow-hired me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and Pat took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carryin' on, and he kept it up all over town with a tin pan, till most midnight. Then they jailed him, and next day they got him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said he was satisfied. Said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for him. When he got out the new judge said he wasn't going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak.  But now he wasn't going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words, so he cried, and his wife, she cried again. Pat said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so, so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand and said, look at it gentlemen and ladies all, take a hold of it, shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog, but it ain't so no more. It's the hand of a man that started in on a new life and will die before he'll go back. You mark them words. Don't forget, I said them. It's a clean hand now, shake it. Don't be afeared. So they shook it one after the other all around and cried. The judge's wife, she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got powerful thirsty and clumped out on the porch roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of Forty Rod and clumped back again and had a good old time. And towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rode off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and most froze to death when somebody found him after sunup. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundence before they could navigate it. The judge, he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 He went for Judge Thatcher. Huck decided to leave. Political economy thrashing around. Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money. And he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or I'll run him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite-pap. The law trial was a slow business. Appeared like they weren't ever going to get started on it, so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off in the judge to keep from getting to cow-hiding. Every time he got money he got drunk, and every time he got drunk he raised cane around town, and every time he raised cane he got jailed. He was just suited. This kind of thing was right in his line. He got to hanging around the widows too much, and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring and catched me, and took me up the river about three miles in a skiff and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there weren't no houses, but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head at night. He had a gun which he had stolen, I reckon, and we fished and hunted and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whiskey, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time and lit me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but Pat drove him off with a gun, and it weren't long after that till I was used to being where I was and liked it, oh, but the cow-high part. It was kind of lazy and jolly and laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing and no books nor study.  I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing because the widow didn't like it, but now I took it up again because Pat hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around. But by and by Pat got too handy with his hickory and I couldn't stand it. I was all over-welds. He got to going away so much too and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was going three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got grounded, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There weren't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimney. It was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pat was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away. I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times. Well, I was most all the time at it because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last. I found an old rusty wood saw without any handle. It was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin, behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out, big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting toward the end of it when I heard Papp's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon Papp come in. Papp weren't in a good humor, so he was his natural self. He said he was downtown and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial. But then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widows any more and be so cramped up and civilized as they call it. Then the old man got to Cussan and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed him all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any. And after that he polished off with a kind of general cuss all around, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's his name when he got to them and went right along with his Cussan. He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him, he knowed of a place six or seven miles off to Stomyon, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute. I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance. The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty pound sack of cornmeal and a side of bacon, ammunition and a four gallon jug of whiskey, and an old book and two newspapers for watching, besides some tow. I towed it up a load and went back and sat down on the bow with a skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun in some lines and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away from the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if Pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or grounded. I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would have thought he was Adam. He was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the government. This time, he says, Call this a government? Why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law, a standing reddit to take a man's son away from him, a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last and ready to go to work and begin to do something for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him, and they call that government. That ain't all another, the law backs that old judge statue up and helps him to keep me out of my property. Here's what the law does. The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upwards and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitting for a hog. They call that government. A man can't get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I have a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I've told him so. I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of them heard me and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents, I leave the blamed country and never come a near it again. Then it's the very words. I says, look at my hat, if you call it a hat. But the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin. Then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through the genistove pipe. Look at it, says I. Such a hat for me to wear, one of the wealthiest men in this town, if I could get my rights. Oh yes, this is a wonderful government. Wonderful. Why look at here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio, a mooladder, most as wide as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat. And there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had. And he had a gold watch and chain and a silver-headed cane, the awfulest old gray-headed neighbor in the state. And what do you think? He said he was a professor in a college and could talk all kinds of languages and know everything. And that ain't the worst. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is a country you're coming to? It was election day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I weren't too drunk to get there. And when they told me there was a state in this country where they let that nigger vote, I draw it out. I says, I'll never vote again. Them's the very words I said, they all hurt me. And the country may rot for all me. I'll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger, why, he wouldn't give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out of the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up an auction and sold? That's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? They said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There now, that's a specimen. They call that a government that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months. Huh, it's a government that calls itself a government that lets on to be a government that thinks it's a government, and yet's got to set stock still for six whole months before it can take hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted, free nigger and papoise going on so he never noticed where his old ember legs was taking him to. So he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins. And the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language mostly hold at the nigger and the government, though he gave the tub some too, all along here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it. So now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt and rolled there and held his toes, and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Soberry Hagen in his best days, and he said it laid over him too, but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. After supper pap took the jug and said he had enough whiskey there for two drunks and one delirium trimens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I could steal the key. I saw myself out, one on the other. He drank and drank and tumbled down on his blankets by and by, but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep and the candle burning. I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said there was crawling up his legs, and then he would give a jump and scream and say one had bit him on the cheek, but I couldn't see no snakes. He started and run round and round the cabin hollering, take him off, take him off, he's biting me on the neck. I never see a man look so wild in his eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out and fell down panting. Then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands and screaming and saying there was devils a hold to him. He wore out by and by and laid still a while moaning. Then he laid stiller and didn't make a sound. I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was laying over by a corner. By and by he raised a part way and listened with his head to one side. He says very low. Trap, trap, trap, that's the dead. Trap, trap, trap, they're coming after me, but I won't go.  Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone. And he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-begging, and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket. By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet, looking wild. He see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a clasp knife, calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no more.  Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone, but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out and dropped down with his back against the door and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him and said he would sleep and get strong, then he would see who was who. So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split bottom chair and clumped up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel pointing towards Papp and sat down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 Laying for him Locked in the cabin Sinking the body resting Get up, what you bout? I opened my eyes and looked around trying to make out where I was. It was after sun up and I had been sound asleep.  He says, what you doing with this gun? I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing so I says somebody tried to get in so I was laying for him. Why didn't you rouse me out? Well, I tried but I couldn't, I couldn't budge you. Well, all right, don't stand there blabbering all day but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a minute. He unlocked the door and I cleared out up the river bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down and a sprinkler in the bark so I know the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me because as soon as that rise begins here comes cord wood floating down in pieces of log rafts. Sometimes a dozen logs together so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood yards and the sawmill. I went along up the bank with one eye out for Papp and another one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe just the beauty to about 13 or 14 foot long riding high like a duck.  I just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it because people often done that to fool folks and when the chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift canoe sure enough and I clummed in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this, she's worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore Papp wasn't in sight yet and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully all hung over with vines and willows I struck another idea. I judged I'd hide her good and then instead of taking to the woods when I run off I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good and not have such a rough time trapping on foot. It was pretty close to the shanty and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time but I got her head and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows and there was the old man down the path of peace just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun so he hadn't seen anything. When he got along I was hard at it taking up a trot line. He abused me a little for being so slow but I told him I fell in the river and that was what made me so long. I know he would see I was wet and then he would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home. While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up both of us being about wore out I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep Papp and the widow from trying to follow me it would be a certain true thing then trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me. You see all kinds of things might happen. Well I didn't see no way for a while but by and by Papp raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water and he says another time a man comes a proud and round here you roused me out you hear that man weren't here for no good. I had a shot him next time you roused me out you hear then he dropped down and went to sleep again but what he'd been saying gave me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself I can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me. About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. By and by along comes part of a long raft nine logs fast together. We went out with a skiff and towed it ashore then we had dinner. Anybody but Papp would have waited and seen the day through so as to catch more stuff but that warn Papp style. Nine logs was enough for one time he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff and started off towing the raft about half past three. I judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had a good start then I out with my saw and went to work on that log again. Before he was to the side of the river I was out of the hole. Him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. I took the sack of cornmeal and took it to where the canoe was hid and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in. Then I done the same with the side of bacon then the whiskey jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was and all the ammunition. I took the wadding. I took the bucket and gourd. I took a dipper and a tin cup and my old saw and two blankets and the skillet and the coffee pot. I took fish lines and matches and other things, everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe but there wasn't any only the one out at the wood pile and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun and now I was done. I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging out so many things so I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place which covered up the smoothness and the sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place and put two rocks under it and won against it to hold it there for it was bent up at that place and didn't quite touch the ground. If you stood four or five feet away and didn't know it was sawd you would never notice it and besides this was the back of the cabin and it weren't likely anybody would go fooling around there. It was all grass clear to the canoe so I hadn't left the track. I followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the river all safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods and was hunting around for some birds. When I see a wild pig, hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms, I shot this fellow and took him into camp. I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it considerably doing it. I fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe and laid him down on the ground to bleed. I say ground because it was ground hard packed with no boards. Well next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it all I could drag and I started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in and down it sunk out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there. I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.  Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket so he wouldn't drip till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of metal and my old saw out of the canoe and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw for there weren't no knives or forks on the place, papped on everything with his clasp knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and threw the willows east to the house to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes and ducks too you might say in the season. There was a slew and a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away. I don't know where but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped Papp's whetstone there too so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string so it wouldn't leak no more and took it and my saw to the canoe again. It was about dark now so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank and waited for the moon to rise. I made fast to a willow then I took a bite to eat and by and by I laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself they'll follow the track of that sack full of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me and they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go browsing down the creek that leaves out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that and won't bother no more about me. All right. I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson's Island is good enough for me. I know that island pretty well and nobody ever comes there and then I can paddle over to town nights and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place. I was pretty tired and the first thing I know that I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could have counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along. Black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Everything was dead quiet and it looked late and smelt late. You know what I mean? I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in roll-locks when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches and there it was. A skiff away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept coming and when it was the breast of me I see there weren't but one man in it. Thanks I, maybe it's Pap though I weren't expecting him. He dropped below me with the current and by and by he came a swinging up shore in the easy water and he went by so close I could have reached out the gun and touched him. Well it was Pap sure enough and sober too by the way he laid his oars. I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a spinning downstream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more toward the middle of the river because pretty soon I would be passing the fur landing and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I lay there and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe looking away to the sky not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine. I never knowed it before and how far a body can hear on the water such nights. I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said too every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days in the short nights now. The other one said this weren't one of the short ones he reckoned and then they laughed and he said it over again and they laughed again. Then they waked up another fellow and told him but he didn't laugh. He ripped out something brisk and said let him alone. The first fellow said he allowed to tell it to his old woman. She would think it was pretty good and he said that weren't nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was near to three o'clock and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away and I couldn't make out the words any more but I could hear the mumble and now within a laugh too but it seemed a long ways off. I was away below the ferry now. I rose up and there was Jackson's Island about two miles and a half downstream heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river big and dark and solid like a steamboat without any lights. There weren't any signs of the bar at the head. It was all under water now. It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping rate. The current was so swift and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side toward the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about. I had to part the willow branches to get in and when I made fast nobody could have seen the canoe from the outside. I went up and sat down on a log at the head of the island and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town three mile away where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous big lumber raft was about a mile upstream coming along down with a lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, star an oars there, heaver head to starboard. I heard that as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now so I stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This sleeper vox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8, Sleeping in the Woods, Raising the Dead, Exploring the Island, Finding Jim, Jim's Escape, Signs, Ballum. The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the grass in the cool shade thinking about things and feeling rested and rather comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes but mostly it was big trees all about and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves and the freckled places swapped about a little showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels sat on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. I was powerful, lazy and comfortable, didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I think I hear a deep sound of boom away up the river. I rouses up and rests on my elbow and listens. Pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up about to brass the ferry. And there was the ferry boat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. Boom! I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry boat side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water trying to make my carcass come to the top. I was pretty hungry but it weren't going to do for me to start a fire because they might see the smoke. So I sat there and watched the cannon smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there and it always looks pretty on a summer morning. So I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off because they always go right to the drowned carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a look out and if any of them is floating around after me, I'll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have and I weren't disappointed. A big double loaf come along and I most got it with a long stick but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course, I was where the current set in the closest to the shore. I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver and set my teeth in. It was baker's bread.  I got a good place amongst the leaves and sat there on a log munching the bread and watching the ferryboat and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me and here it has gone and done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing. That is, there is something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays but it don't work for me and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke and went on watching. The ferryboat was floating with the current and I allowed I'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along because she would come in close where the bread did. When she got pretty well along down toward me I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread and lay down behind the log on the bank in a little open place where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along and she drifted in so close that they could have run out of plank and walk to shore. Most everybody was on board. Pap and Judge Thatcher and Bessie Thatcher and Joe Harper and Tom Sawyer and his old Aunt Polly and Sid and Mary and plenty more. Everybody was talking about the murder but the captain broke in and says, look sharp now the current set the closest here and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I hope so anyway. I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails nearly in my face and kept still watching with all their might. I could see them first rate but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out, stand away and the cannon let all such a blast right before me that it made me deep with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke and I judged I was gone. If they had had some bullets in, I reckon they had got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt thanks to goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming now and then further and further off and by and by after an hour I couldn't hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot and was given it up but they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side under steam and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast ahead of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw and toward sundown I started my campfire and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. When it was dark I set by my campfire smoking and feeling pretty well satisfied but by and by it got sort of lonesome and so I went and sat on the bank and listened to the currents swashing along and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that come down and then went to bed. There ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome. You can't stay so. You soon get over it. And so for three days and nights no difference just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it. It all belonged to me so to say and I wanted to know all about it. But mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries ripe in prime and green summer grapes and green raspberries and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by I judged. Well I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I weren't far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along but I hadn't shot nothing. It was for protection though I would kill some game now home. About this time a modern ear stepped on a good sized snake and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers and I after it trying to get shot at it. I clipped along and all of a sudden I bounded right onto the ashes of a campfire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for it to look further but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could.  I slunk along another piece further and then listened again and so on and so on. If I see a stump I took it for a man. If I tried on a stick and broke it it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half and the short half too. When I got to camp I weren't feeling very brash there wasn't much sand in my craw but I says this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours but I didn't see nothing. I didn't hear nothing. I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well I couldn't stay up there forever so at last I got down and I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time all I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry so when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a supper and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I heard a plunkety plunk plunkety plunk and says to myself horse is coming and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I heard a man say we better camp here if we can find a good place the horses is about beat out let's look around. I didn't wait but shoved off and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. I didn't sleep much I couldn't somehow for thinking and every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck so the sleep didn't do me no good. By and by I says to myself I can't live this way I'm going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me I'll find out or bust well I felt better right off so I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows the moon was shining and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day I poked along well on to an hour everything stills rocks and sound to sleep well by this time I was most down to the foot of the island a little ripply cool breeze begun to blow and that was as good as saying the night was about done I gave her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods I sat down there on a log and looked out through the leaves I see the moon go off watch and the darkness began to blanket the river but in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops and no the day was coming so I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that campfire stopping every minute or two to listen but I had no luck somehow I couldn't seem to find a place but by and by sure enough I catch the glimpse of fire away through the trees I went for it cautious and slow by and by I was close enough to have a look and there laid a man on the ground it most gave me the fantods he had a blanket around his head and his head was nearly in the fire I sat there behind the clupp of trees in about six foot of him and kept my eyes on him steady it was getting gray daylight now pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hold off the blanket and it was miss Watson's Jim I bet I was glad to see him I says hello Jim and skipped out he bounced up and stared at me wild then he drops down on his knees and puts his hands together and says don't hurt me don't I ain't never done no harm to no ghosts I always liked dead people and done all I could for them you go and get in the river again where you belongs and don't do nothing to old Jim and it's always your friend well I weren't long making him understand I weren't dead I was ever so glad to see Jim I weren't lonesome now I told him I weren't afraid of him telling the people where I was I talked along but he only sat there and looked at me never said nothing then I says it's good daylight let's get breakfast make up your campfire good what's the use of making up the campfire to cook strawberries in such truck but you got a gun ain't you then we can get something better than strawberries strawberries in such truck I says is that what you live on I couldn't get nothing else he says why how long you've been on this island Jim I come here I did not after you were skilled what all that time yes indeedy and ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbish to eat oh sir nothing else well you must be most starved ain't you I reckon I could eat a horse I think I could how long you've been on this island since the night I got killed no why what has you lived on but you got a gun oh yes you got a gun that's good now you kill something and I'll make up the fire so we went over to where the canoe was and while he built the fire in the grass he opened place amongst the trees I fetched meal and bacon and coffee and coffee pot and frying pan and sugar and 10 cups and the nail was set back considerable because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft I catched a good big catfish too and Jim cleaned him with his knife and fried him when breakfast was ready we lulled on the grass and it's smoking hot Jim laid in with all his might for he was most about starved then when we had got pretty well stuffed we laid off and leased by and by Jim says but look here duck who was it that was killed in that chanty if it weren't you then I told him the whole thing and he said it was smart he said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had then I says how do you come to be here Jim and how'd you get here he looked pretty uneasy and didn't say nothing for a minute then he says maybe I better not tell why Jim well there's reasons but you wouldn't tell on me if I was to tell you would you hook blamed if I would Jim well I believe you hook I I run off jam but mine you said you wouldn't tell you know you said you wouldn't tell hook well I did I said I wouldn't and I'll stick to it honest engine I will people would call me a low-down abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum but that don't make no difference I ain't going to tell and I ain't going back there anyways so now let's know all about it well you see us this way old missus that smith swanson she picks on me all the time and treats me pretty rough but she always says she wouldn't sell me down to all ends but I noticed they was a nigga trading round the place considerable lately and I began to get on easy well one night I creeps in the dough pulled late and the dough wasn't one quite should and I hear old missus tell the winner she grind to sell me down to all leans but she didn't want to but she said she could get eight hundred dollars for me and it is such a big stack of money she couldn't resist the winner she tried to get her to say she wouldn't do it but I never waited to hear the rest I let out my quick I tell you I took out and shinned down to hill and specter steal a skip long to show some as above the town but there was people are stirring yet so I head in the old humble down koopa shop on the bank to wait for everybody to go away well I was down night there was somebody around all the time longer by six in the morning skiffs were going to go by and about eight and nine every shift that went long was talking about how your pap come over to the town and says you's killed these last skiffs was full of ladies and gentlemen are going over for a cedar place sometimes they'd pull up to the show and take a rest before they started to cross so by the talk I got to know all about the killing. I was powerful sorry you's killed huck but I ain't no more now. I laid down under shavings all day I was hungry but I weren't afraid because I know the old Mrs and the winner was going to start to the camp meeting right after breakfast and be gone all day and they knows I goes off with the cattle about daylight so they wouldn't expect to see me round the place and so they wouldn't miss me till at a dark in the evening the other servants wouldn't miss me because they shun out to take holiday soon as the old folks is out of the way well when it come dark I took out up the river road and went about two mile or more to where they want no houses I made up my mind about what I was going to do you see if I keep on trying to get away a foot the dogs would track me and if I stole a skip to crossover they'd missed that skip you see and they know about where I land on the other side and where to pick up my track so I says a raft is what eyes adder it don't make no track I see a lighter coming round with the pint by and by so I weighed in and shoved a log ahead of me and swum more than halfway across the river and got in amongst the driftwood and then keep my head down low and kind of swim again to current till the raft come along then I swam to the stern of it and took a hold it clouded up and it was put at dark for a little while so I clump up and laid down on the planks the men is all way under in the middle of where the lantern was the river was a rising and there was a good current so I reckon that by four in the morning I'd be 25 mile down the river and did not slip in just before daylight and swim a show and take to the woods on the Illinois side but I didn't have no luck when we was most down to the head of the island a man begun to come up with the lantern I see it weren't no use for the wait so I slid overboard and stuck out for the island well I had a notion I could land most anywhere but I couldn't back to bluff I was most of the foot of the island before I found a good place I went into the woods and judged I wouldn't fool with rafts no more long as they moved the lantern around so I had my pipe and a plug a dog leg and some matches in my cap and they weren't wet so I was all right and so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time why didn't you get mud turtles how you going to get them you can't slip on them and grab them and how's the body going to hit him with a rock how could a body do it in the night and I wasn't going to show myself on the bank in the daytime well that's so you had to keep to the woods all the time of course did you hear him shooting the cannon oh yes I know it was out of you I see him go by here watched him to the bushes some young birds come along flying a yard or two at a time and lighting Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way and so he reckoned it was the same when young birds done it I was going to catch some of them but Jim wouldn't let me he said it was death he said his father laid mind a sick once and some of them catch the bird and his old granny said his father would die and he did and Jim said you mustn't count the things you're going to cook for dinner because that would bring bad luck the same if you shook the tablecloth after sundown and he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died the bees must be told about it before sun up next morning or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die Jim said bees wouldn't sting itch it's but I didn't believe that because I had tried them a lot the time myself and they wouldn't sting me I had heard about some of these things before but not all of them Jim knowed all kinds of signs he said he knowed most everything I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck and so I asked him if there weren't any good luck signs he says might a few and they ain't no used to a body what you want to know when good lucks are coming for want to keep it off and he said if and you got hairy arms at a hairy breast it's a sign that you are going to be rich well there's some use in the sign like that because it's so far ahead you'll see maybe you's got to be po a long time first and so you might get discouraged and kill yourself if you didn't know by the sign that you want to be rich by and by have you got hairy arms at a hairy breast Jim what's the use to ask that question don't you see I has well are you rich no but I've been rich once and going to be rich again once I had 14 dollars but I took the speculating and got busted out what did you speculate in Jim well first I tackle stock what kind of stock why livestock cattle you know I put 10 dollars in a cow but I ain't going to risk no more money in stock decal up and died on my hands so you lost 10 dollars no I didn't lose it all I only lost about nine of it I sold a hide and tell her for a dollar and 10 cents you had five dollars and 10 cents left did you speculate anymore yes you know that one legged nigga that belongs to old Mr. Braddish well he sought up a bank and said anybody that put in a dollar would get four dollar mo at the end of the year well all the niggas went in but they didn't have much I was the only one that had much so I stuck out promoting four dollars and I said if I didn't get it I'd start a bank myself well of course that nigga wants to keep me out of the business because he says there weren't business enough for two banks so he says I could put my five dollars in and he'd pay me 35 at the end of the year so I done it then I reckoned I'd invest the 35 dollars right off and keep things moving there was a nigga named Bob that had catch the wood flat and his master didn't know it and I bought it off in him and told him to take the 35 dollars when the end of the year come but somebody stole the wood flat that night and the next day the one legged nigga say the banks busted so they didn't none of us get no money what did you do with the 10 cents Jim well I was going to spend it but I had a dream and the dream told me to give it to a nigga named ballam ballam his ass they call him for short and he's one of them chuckleheads you know but he's lucky they say and I see I weren't lucky the dream say let ballam invest the 10 cents and he'd make a raise for me well ballam he took the money and when he was in church he had the preacher say that whoever give to the poll lend to the lord and bound to get his money back a hundred times so ballam he took and give the 10 cents to the poll and laid low to see what was going to come of it well what did come of it Jim nothing came of it I couldn't manage to collect that money no way and ballam he couldn't I ain't going to lend no more money doubt I see the security bound to get your money back a hundred times the preacher says huh if I could get the 10 cents back I call it square and be glad at a chance well it's all right Jim long as you're going to be rich again sometime or other yes and I was rich now come to look at it I owns myself and I was worth eight hundred dollars I wish I had the money I wouldn't want no more end of chapter eight chapter nine of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter nine the cave the floating house I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I'd found when I was exploring so we started and soon got to it because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide this place was a tolerable long steep hill or ridge about 40 feet high we had a rough time getting to the top the size was so steep and the bush is so thick we tramped and clump around all over it and by and by I found a good big cavern in the rock most up to the top on the side towards Illinois the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together and Jim could stand up straight in it it was cool in there Jim was for putting our traps in there right away but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place and had all the traps in the cavern we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island and they would never find us without dogs and besides he said them little birds had said it was going to rain and did I want the things to get wet so we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern and lugged all the traps up there then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in amongst the thick willows we took some fish off the lines and set them again and begun to get ready for dinner the door of the cavern was big enough to roll the hogs head in and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on so we built it there and cooked dinner we spread the blankets inside for a carpet and eat our dinner in there we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lightening so the birds was right about it directly it begun to rain and it rained like all fury too and I never see the wind blow so it was one of these regular summer storms it would get so dark that it looked all blue black outside and lovely and the rain would rash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby and here would come a blast the wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to toss in their arms as if they was just wild and next when it was just about the bluest and blackest it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops a plunging about a way off yonder in the storm hundreds of yards further than you could see before dark is sin again in a second and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling grumbling tumbling down the sky toward the underside of the world like rolling empty barrels downstairs where it's long stare and they bounce a good deal you know Jim this is nice I says I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here and pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread well you wouldn't have been here if it hadn't been for Jim you'd have been down there in the woods without any dinner and getting most drown to do that you would honey chickens knows when it's going to rain and so do the birds child the river went on raising and raising for 10 or 12 days till at last it was over the banks the water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom on that side it was a good many miles wide but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across a half mile because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs day times we paddled all over the island in the canoe it was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods even if the sun was blazing outside we went winding in and out amongst the trees and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way well on every old broken down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame on a kind of being hungry that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to but not the snakes and turtles they would slide off in the water the ridge our cabin was in was full of them we could have had pets enough if we'd wanted them one night we catch a little section of a lumber raft nice pine planks it was 12 foot wide at about 15 or 16 foot long and the top stood above water six or seven inches a solid level floor we could see saw logs go by in the daylight sometimes but we let them go we didn't show ourselves in daylight another night when we was up at the head of the island just before daylight here comes a frame house down on the west side she was a two-story and tilted over considerable we paddled out and got aboard come in at an upstairs window but it was too dark to see yet so we made the canoe fast and sat in her to wait for daylight the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island then we looked in at the window we could make out of bed a table and two chairs a lot of things around about on the floor and there was clothes hanging against the wall there was something lying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man so jim says hello you but it didn't budge so i hollered again and then jim says the man ain't asleep he's dead you hold still i'll go and see he went and bent down and looked and says it's a dead man yes indeed he naked too he been shot into back i reckon he's been dead two uh three days come in huck but don't look at his face it's too gashy i didn't look at him at all jim throwed some old rags over him but he didn't done it i didn't want to see him there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor and old whiskey bottles and a couple of masks made out of black cloth and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal there was two old dirty calico dresses and a sun bonnet and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall and some men's clothing too we put the lot into the canoe it might come good there was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor i took that too and there was a bottle that had had milk in it and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck we would have took the bottle but it was broke there was a seedy old chest and an old head trunk with the hinges broke they stood open but there weren't nothing in them that was any account the way things were scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry and weren't fixed so as to carry off most of that stuff we got an old tin lantern and the butcher knife without any handle and a brand new barlow knife worth two bits in any store and a lot of tallow candles and a tin candlestick and a gourd and a tin cup and a radio bake wilt off the bed and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it and a hatchet and some nails and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it and a roll of buck skin and a leather dog collar and a horseshoe and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good curry comb and jim he found a rady old filibault and a wooden leg the straps was broke off it but bar in that it was a good enough leg though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim and we couldn't find the other one though we hunted all around and so take it all around we made a good haul when we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island and it was pretty broad day so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off i paddled over to the Illinois shore and drifted down most a half mile doing it i crept up the dead water under the bank and had no accidents and didn't see nobody we got home all safe end of chapter nine chapter ten of the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter ten the find old hank bunker in disguise after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he came to be killed but jim didn't want to he said it would fetch bad luck and besides he said he might come in haunt us he said a man that weren't buried was more likely to go haunting around than one that was planted uncomfortable that sounded pretty reasonable so i didn't say no more but i couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing i know who shot the man and what they'd done it for we rummaged the clothes we got and found eight dollars in silver sold up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat because if they didn't know the money was there they wouldn't have left it i said i reckoned they killed him too but jim didn't want to talk about that i says now you think it's bad luck but what did you say when i fetched in the snakeskin that i found on the top of the rid day before yesterday you said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snakeskin with my hands well here's your bad luck we raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides i wish we could have some bad luck like this every day jim never you mind hunter never you mind don't you get too pert it's a coming mind i tell you it's a coming it did come to it was a tuesday that we had that talk well after dinner friday we was laying around in the grass at the up end of the ridge and got out of tobacco i went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there i killed him and curled him up on the foot of jim's blanket ever so natural thinking that'd be some fun when jim found him there well my night i forgot all about the snake and when jim flung himself down on the blanket while i struck a light the snake's mate was there and bit him he jumped up yelling and the first thing the light showed was the vomit curled up and ready for another spring i laid him out in the second with a stick and jim grabbed pap's whiskey jug and began to pour it down he was barefooted and the snake bit him right on the heel that all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that whatever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away and then skin the body and roast a piece of it i done it and he ate it and said it would help cure him he made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist too he said that would help then i slid out quiet and throw the snakes clear away amongst the bushes for i weren't gonna let jim find out it was all my fault not if i could help it jim sucked and sucked at the jug and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again his foot swelled up pretty big and so did his leg but by and by the drunk began to come and so i judged he was all right but i'd rather been bit with a snake than perhaps whiskey jim was laid up for four days and nights then the swelling was all gone and he was around again i made up my mind i wouldn't ever take a hold of a snakeskin again with my hands now that i see what come of it jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time and he said that handling the snakeskin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet he said he'd rather see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snakeskin in his hand well i was getting to feel that way myself though i've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carol assist and foolishest things a body can do oh hank bunker done it once and bragged about it and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just kind of a layer as you may say they slid him edgewise between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him so so they say but i didn't see it pap told me but anyway it all come out of looking at the moon that way like a fool well the days went along and the river went down between its banks again and about the first thing we done was debate one of the big hooks with a skin rabbit and set it to catch a catfish that was as big as a man being six foot two inches long and weighed over 200 pounds we couldn't handle him of course he would have flung us into illinois we just sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned we found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball and lots of rubbish we split the ball open with a hatchet and there was a spool in it jim said he'd had it there a long time to coat it over and make a ball of it it was as big a fish as was ever catched in the mississippi i reckon jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one he would have been worth a good deal over at the village they paddle out such fish as that by the pound in the market house there everybody by some of him his meets as wide as snow and makes a good fry next morning i said it was getting slow and dull and i wanted to get a story up some way i said i reckoned i would slip over the river and find out what was going on jim liked that notion but he said i must go in the dark and look sharp then he studied it over and said couldn't i put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl that was a good notion too so we shortened up one of the calico gowns and i turned up my trousers legs to my knees and got into it jim hitched it behind with the hooks and it was a fair fit i put on the sun bonnet and tied it under my chin and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a join a stove pipe jim said nobody would know me even in the daytime hardly i practiced around all day to get the hang of the things and by and by i could do pretty well in them only jim said i didn't walk like a girl and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britch's pocket i took notice and done better i started up the illinar shore in the canoe just after dark i started to cross to the town from a little below the ferry landing and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town i tied up and started along the bank there was a light burning and a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time and i wondered who had took up quarters there i slipped up and peeped in at the window there was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table i didn't know her face she was a stranger for you couldn't start a face in that town that i didn't know now this was lucky because i was weakening i was getting afraid i had come people might know my voice and find me out but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know so i knocked at the door and made up my mind i wouldn't forget i was a girl end of chapter 10 chapter 11 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 11 hook 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 sarah williams whereabouts do you live in this neighborhood gnome in hookerville seven miles below i've walked all the way and i'm all tired out hungry too i reckon i'll find you something no i ain't hungry i was so hungry i had to stop two miles below here at a farm so i ain't hungry no more it's what makes me so late my mother's down sick and out of money and everything and i come to tell my uncle abner more he lives at the upper end of the town she says i ain't never been here before uh 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 take off your bonnet no i says i'll rest a while i reckon that and go on i ain't a fear to the dark she said she wouldn't let me go by myself but her husband would be in by and by maybe in an hour and a half and she said she sent 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 us and how they didn't know but they made a mistake coming to our town instead of letting well alone and so on and so on till i was a fear that 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 chatter right along she told about me and tom saw her finding the six thousand dollars only she got it 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 it was that killed huck fin well i reckon there's a right smart chance of people here that had liked to know who killed him some think old fin done it himself no is that so most everybody thought it at first he'll never know how now he comes to getting lynched but before night they changed around 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 the nigger run off the very night huck fin was killed sold as a reward out for him three hundred dollars and there's a reward out for old fin two two hundred dollars you see he come to town the morning after the murder 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 well next day they found out the nigger was gone 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 fin and went boo hoo into 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 well he ain't come back since and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it and then he'd get huck's money without having to bother a long time with the lawsuit 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 quiet and down then and he'll walk in huck's money as easy as nothing yes I reckon so him I don't see nothing in the way of it has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it no not everybody a good many things he done it but they don't get the nigger pretty soon now and maybe they can scare it out of him why they have to 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 hard and anybody ever goes to that island over yonder that they call Jackson's Island don't anybody live there says I know nobody says they I didn't say any more but I done some thinking I was pretty near a certain I had seen smoke over there about the head of the island a day or two before that and I says to myself like it's not that niggers hiding over there anyway says I it's worth the trouble to give the place a hunt I hate seeing 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 going up the river but he got back today 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 of the table and went to threaten it my hands 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 smiled in a little I put down the needle and thread and let on to be interested and I was true 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 they can slip around 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 I said it was Mary before so I didn't look up seemed to me I said it was Sarah so I felt sort of cornered and was a feared maybe I was looking at two I wish the woman would say something more the longer she said still the uneasy I was but now she says honey I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in oh yes I did Sarah Mary Williams Sarah is my first name some call me Sarah some call me Mary oh that's the way of it yes I was feeling better then but I wish I was out of there anyway I couldn't look up yet well the woman felt the talking about how hard times was and how poor they had to live and how the rats was as free as if they owned the place and so forth and so on and then I got easy again she was right about the rats you see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner every little while she said she had to have things handy to throw with 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 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 arms 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 I got the thing and the first rat that showed his nose I let drive and if he'd stayed where he was he'd have been a tolerable sick rat she said that was first rate and she reckoned I would have 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 keep your eye on the rats you'd 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 and 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 and 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 know you won't sit down and stay where you are I ain't gonna hurt you and I ain't gonna tell on you another you just tell me your secret and trust me I'll keep it and what's more I'll help you so my old man if you want him to you see you're a runaway apprentice that's all it ain't anything there ain't no harm in it you've been treated bad and you made up your mind to cut and bless you child I wouldn't tell on you tell me all about it now that's a good boy so I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer and I would just make a clean breast and tell her everything but she mustn't go back on her promise 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 mile 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 come in the thirty miles I traveled nights and hid day times and slept at the bag of bread and meat I carried from home lasted me all the way and I had a plenty I said I believed my uncle Abner 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 mile further up the river who told you this was Goshen why a man I met a daybreak this morning just as I was going to turn into the woods from a 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 to her gets up first and to me prompt now don't you stop to study over it which end gets up first the hind end mum well then a horse the far end mum which side of a tree does the moss grow on north side if fifteen cows is browsing on the 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 focus me again what's your real name now George Peters mum well you try to remember it George don't forget to tell me it's Alexander before you go and then get out by saying it's George Alexander when I catch you and don't go about women in that old calico you do a girl tolerable poor but you might fool men maybe bless you child when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it hold the needle still and poke the thread at it that's the way a woman almost always does but a man always does to the way and when you throw at a rat or anything hit yourself up on tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can and miss your rat about six or seven foot 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 try to along to your uncle Sarah Mary Williams George Alexander Peters and if you get into trouble you send word to missus 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 roads are rocky one and your feet will be in a condition when you get to Goshen I reckon I went up the bank about fifty yards and then I doubled all 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 take the head of the island and then started across I took off the sunbonded 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 some listens 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 and 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 I landed and slopped through the timber and up the ridge and into the cavern there Jim laid sound asleep on the ground I roused him out and says get up and hump yourself Jim 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 co where she was hit we put out the campfire in 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 end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain this slavery box recording is in the public domain chapter 12 slow navigation borrowing things boarding the wreck the plotters hunting for the boat it must have been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last and the raft didn't seem to go so 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 even 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 campfire 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 in a big bend on the Illinois side and hacked off cottonwood branches with a 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 up bound 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 men was ready to start and he believed they must have gone up the town 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 indeed 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 blaze in weather and rainy and to keep things dry Jim made a floor for the wigwam and raised it a foot or 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 the frame around it for the hold it to this was to build a fire on and sloppy weather or chili 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 them getting run over but we wouldn't have to light it for upstream boats unless 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 the second night we run between seven and eight hours with the current that was making over four mile 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 steel river laying on our backs looking up at the stars and we didn't even feel like talking loud and it weren't often that we laughed only a little kind of a low chuckle we had might a 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 away up on black hillsides nothing but a 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's still night there weren't a sound there everybody was asleep every night now i used to slip ashore toward 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 cornfields 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 you 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 that 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 anymore 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 settled satisfactory and concluded to drop crab apples and persimmons we weren't feeling just right before that but it was all comfortable now i was glad the way it come out too because crab apples ain't ever good and the persimmons wouldn't be ripe 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 around we lived pretty high the fifth night below st louis we had a big storm after midnight with the power of thunder and lightning and the rain poured down in a solid sheet we stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself when the lightning cleared out we could see a big straight riverhead and high rocky bluffs on both sides by and by says i hello gem looky under 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 chimney guy clean and clear and a chair by the big bell with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flash has come well it being away in the night and stormy and also 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 a board of her and slink around a little and see what was there so i says let's land on her gem but gem was dead against it at first he says i don't want to go full and long and no rack we don't blame well and we better let blame well alone as the good book says like it's not there's a watchman on that rack watchman your grandmother i says there ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilot house and you reckon anybody's 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 gem 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 stateroom cigars i bet you and cost five cents apiece solid cash steamboat captains is always rich and get sixty dollars a month and they don't care a cent what a thing costs you know as long as they want it stick a candle in your pocket i can't rest gem till we give her a rummaging do you reckon tom soya would ever go by this thing not for pie he wouldn't he call it an adventure that's what he call it and he'd l