第 43 页

and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all

the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so

long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one

he'd wake up in his right mind.

So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his

eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:

"Hello!--why, I'm at HOME! How's that? Where's the raft?"

"It's all right," I says.

"And JIM?"

"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never

noticed, but says:

"Good! Splendid! NOW we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "About what, Sid?"

"Why, about the way the whole thing was done."

"What whole thing?"

"Why, THE whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway

nigger free--me and Tom."

"Good land! Set the run--What IS the child talking about! Dear, dear,

out of his head again!"

"NO, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We DID

set him free--me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we DONE it. And we

done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never checked him up,

just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it

warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work

--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep.

And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your

dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan,

and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't

think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and

one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we

had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters

from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole

into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a

pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"

"Mercy sakes!"

"--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for

Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that

you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we

was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive

at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go

by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the

most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all

safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T

it bully, Aunty!"

"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU,

you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned

everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've

as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very

minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a--YOU just get

well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both

o' ye!"

But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his

tongue just WENT it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and

both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:

"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell

you if I catch you meddling with him again--"

"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

"HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've

got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and

water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!"

Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and

shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a

minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur

that walks this earth!"

"What DOES the child mean?"

"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go.

I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson

died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him

down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will."

"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was

already free?"

"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I

wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to

--goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!"

If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as

sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried

over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it

was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in

a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there

looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the

earth, you know. And then she says:

"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."

"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM,

it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago."

"You mean where's Huck FINN--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't

raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE

him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed,

Huck Finn."

So I done it. But not feeling brash.

Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see

--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it

all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't

know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting

sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest

man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told

all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such

a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer--she chipped

in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and

'tain't no need to change"--that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I

had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't

mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an

adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out,

and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.

And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting

Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took

all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't

ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD

help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.

Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and

SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself:

"Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that

way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the

way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's

up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you

about it."

"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally.

"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean

by Sid being here."

"Well, I never got 'em, Sis."

Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:

"You, Tom!"

"Well--WHAT?" he says, kind of pettish.

"Don t you what ME, you impudent thing--hand out them letters."

"What letters?"

"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--"

"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they

was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I

hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if

you warn't in no hurry, I'd--"

"Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I

wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--"

"No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've

got that one."

I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it

was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.

CHAPTER THE LAST

THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time

of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all

right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before?

And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got

Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and

have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about

his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and

pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the

niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight

procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would

we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.

We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle

Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom,

they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him

all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him

up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars

for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim

was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:

"DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson

islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I

TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN; en it's come

true; en heah she is! DAH, now! doan' talk to ME--signs is SIGNS, mine I

tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's

a-stannin' heah dis minute!"

And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three

slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for

howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a

couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't

got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from

home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away

from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and

more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away,

anyhow."

Jim says, kind of solemn:

"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck."

I says:

"Why, Jim?"

"Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo."

But I kept at him; so at last he says:

"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a

man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you

come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat

wuz him."

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard

for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't

nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a

knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and

ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the

Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me

and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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