第 20 页

"No," says the king.

"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says

the duke. "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the

sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

How does that strike you?"

"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you

see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of

it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. Do you

reckon you can learn me?"

"Easy!"

"All right. I'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. Le's

commence right away."

So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and

said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.

"But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white

whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe."

"No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.

Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the

difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight

before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled

nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts."

He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil

armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton

nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so

the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid

spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show

how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him

to get his part by heart.

There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and

after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run

in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would

go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go,

too, and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of coffee, so

Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.

When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and

perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning

himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or

too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the

woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that

camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.

The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a

little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and

printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty,

littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of

horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed

his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for

the camp-meeting.

We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most

awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty

mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched

everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off

the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with

branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of

watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was

bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside

slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into

for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to

stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some

had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones

had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the

children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. Some of

the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on

the sly.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined

out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,

there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he

lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. The people woke up more

and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to

groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and

begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform

and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with

his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with

all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and

spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting,

"It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And

people would shout out, "Glory!--A-a-MEN!" And so he went on, and the

people groaning and crying and saying amen:

"Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (AMEN!) come,

sick and sore! (AMEN!) come, lame and halt and blind! (AMEN!) come, pore

and needy, sunk in shame! (A-A-MEN!) come, all that's worn and soiled and

suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come

in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door

of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!" (A-A-MEN! GLORY,

GLORY HALLELUJAH!)

And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on

account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the

crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench,

with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had

got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and

flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him

over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and

the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He

told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the

Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in

a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to

goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat

without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that

ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the

first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right

off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his

life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it

better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that

ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without

money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he

would say to him, "Don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit; it

all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural

brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the

truest friend a pirate ever had!"

And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings

out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" Well, a half

a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let HIM pass the

hat around!" Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes,

and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so

good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the

prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would

up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he

always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or

six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to

live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said

as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and

besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to

work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had

collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had

fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a

wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take

it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying

line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks

alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

The duke was thinking HE'D been doing pretty well till the king come to

show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He had set up and

printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office--horse

bills--and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten

dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would

put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so they done it.

The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three

subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in

advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he

said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as

he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little

piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head--three

verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold

world, this breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to

print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in

nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work

for it.

Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for,

because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a

bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. The

reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he

run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last

winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him

back he could have the reward and expenses.

"Now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we

want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot

with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we

captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so

we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to

get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but

it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like

jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities, as

we say on the boards."

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble

about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough that night

to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the

printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom

right along if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock;

then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our

lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

"Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?"

"No," I says, "I reckon not."

"Well," says he, "dat's all right, den. I doan' mine one er two kings,

but dat's enough. Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much

better."

I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear

what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and

had so much trouble, he'd forgot it.

CHAPTER XXI.

IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. The

king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after

they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal.

After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and

pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle

in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to

getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good

him and the duke begun to practice it together. The duke had to learn

him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh,

and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it

pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out ROMEO! that way,

like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so--R-o-o-meo!

that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you

know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass."

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of

oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called himself

Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was

grand to see. But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and

after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures

they'd had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke says:

"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I

guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to

answer encores with, anyway."

"What's onkores, Bilgewater?"