The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - 18

was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn’t
give him up, I’d hang him.” And whilst the nigger
stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good,
he whispers to Jim and says:

“Don’t ever let on to know us. And if you hear any
digging going on nights, it’s us; we’re going to set you free.”

Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger
come back, and we said we’d come again some time if the nigger
wanted us to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark,
because the witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to
have folks around then.

---

CHAPTER XXXV.

IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down
into the woods; because Tom said we got to have some light to see
how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into
trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that’s
called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in
a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set
down to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can
be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.
There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there ought
to be a watchman. There ain’t even a dog to give a
sleeping-mixture to. And there’s Jim chained by one leg, with
a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is
to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle Silas he
trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and don’t
send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that
window-hole before this, only there wouldn’t be no use trying to
travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it’s
the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got to invent all the
difficulties. Well, we can’t help it; we got to do the best we
can with the materials we’ve got. Anyhow, there’s one thing—there’s
more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers,
where there warn’t one of them furnished to you by the people who it
was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of
your own head. Now look at just that one thing of the lantern.
When you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on
that a lantern’s resky. Why, we could work with a torchlight
procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of it, we
got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get.”

“What do we want of a saw?”

“What do we want of it? Hain’t we got to saw the
leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose?”

“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the
chain off.”

“Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. You can
get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain’t
you ever read any books at all?—Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor
Benvenuto Chelleeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who
ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that?
No; the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in
two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t be
found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very
keenest seneskal can’t see no sign of it’s being sawed, and
thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. Then, the night you’re ready,
fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you
are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements,
shin down it, break your leg in the moat—because a rope ladder is
nineteen foot too short, you know—and there’s your horses and
your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle,
and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is. It’s
gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time,
the night of the escape, we’ll dig one.”

I says:

“What do we want of a moat when we’re going to snake him out
from under the cabin?”

But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He
had his chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes
his head; then sighs again, and says:

“No, it wouldn’t do—there ain’t necessity enough
for it.”

“For what?” I says.

“Why, to saw Jim’s leg off,” he says.

“Good land!” I says; “why, there ain’t no
necessity for it. And what would you want to saw his leg off for,
anyway?”

“Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn’t
get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a
leg would be better still. But we got to let that go. There
ain’t necessity enough in this case; and, besides, Jim’s a
nigger, and wouldn’t understand the reasons for it, and how it’s
the custom in Europe; so we’ll let it go. But there’s
one thing—he can have a rope ladder; we can tear up our sheets and
make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we can send it to him in a
pie; it’s mostly done that way. And I’ve et worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain’t
got no use for a rope ladder.”

“He has got use for it. How you talk, you better
say; you don’t know nothing about it. He’s got to
have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the nation can he do with it?”

“Do with it? He can hide it in his bed, can’t he?”
That’s what they all do; and he’s got to, too.
Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to do anything that’s
regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. S’pose
he don’t do nothing with it? ain’t it there in his bed,
for a clew, after he’s gone? and don’t you reckon they’ll
want clews? Of course they will. And you wouldn’t leave
them any? That would be a pretty howdy-do, wouldn’t
it! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I says, “if it’s in the regulations, and
he’s got to have it, all right, let him have it; because I don’t
wish to go back on no regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer—if
we go to tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we’re
going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re
born. Now, the way I look at it, a hickry-bark ladder don’t
cost nothing, and don’t waste nothing, and is just as good to load
up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag ladder you can start;
and as for Jim, he ain’t had no experience, and so he don’t
care what kind of a—”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I’d keep
still—that’s what I’D do. Who ever heard of a
state prisoner escaping by a hickry-bark ladder? Why, it’s
perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you’ll take
my advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.”

He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says:

“Borrow a shirt, too.”

“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”

“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”

“Journal your granny—Jim can’t write.”

“S’pose he can’t write—he can make marks on
the shirt, can’t he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon
or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?”

“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a
better one; and quicker, too.”

“Prisoners don’t have geese running around the
donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. They always
make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old
brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and
it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too,
because they’ve got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. They
wouldn’t use a goose-quill if they had it. It ain’t regular.”

“Well, then, what’ll we make him the ink out of?”

“Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that’s the
common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim
can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary
mysterious message to let the world know where he’s captivated, he
can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of
the window. The Iron Mask always done that, and it’s a blame’
good way, too.”

“Jim ain’t got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan.”

“That ain’t nothing; we can get him some.”

“Can’t nobody read his plates.”

“That ain’t got anything to do with it, Huck Finn.
All he’s got to do is to write on the plate and throw
it out. You don’t have to be able to read it. Why, half
the time you can’t read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate,
or anywhere else.”

“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”

“Why, blame it all, it ain’t the prisoner’s
plates.”

“But it’s somebody’s plates, ain’t it?”

“Well, spos’n it is? What does the prisoner care
whose—”

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So
we cleared out for the house.

Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the
clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down
and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing,
because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn’t
borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners;
and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and
nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no
crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom
said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a
prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had
the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we
warn’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but
a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So
we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And
yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon
out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers
a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant
was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I says, I needed the
watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison
with; there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a
wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal
with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I
couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to
set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every
time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled
down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he carried
the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By
and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk.
He says:

“Everything’s all right now except tools; and that’s
easy fixed.”

“Tools?” I says.

“Yes.”

“Tools for what?”

“Why, to dig with. We ain’t a-going to gnaw him
out, are we?”

“Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough
to dig a nigger out with?” I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

“Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and
shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself
out with? Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness
in you at all—what kind of a show would that give him to be a
hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it.
Picks and shovels—why, they wouldn’t furnish ’em
to a king.”

“Well, then,” I says, “if we don’t want the picks
and shovels, what do we want?”

“A couple of case-knives.”

“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”

“Yes.”

“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”

“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the
right way—and it’s the regular way. And there ain’t
no other way, that ever I heard of, and I’ve read all the
books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out
with a case-knife—and not through dirt, mind you; generly it’s
through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and
for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom
dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself
out that way; how long was he at it, you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, guess.”

“I don’t know. A month and a half.”

“Thirty-seven year—and he come out in China. That’s
the kind. I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock.”

“Jim don’t know nobody in China.”

“What’s that got to do with it? Neither did that
other fellow. But you’re always a-wandering off on a side
issue. Why can’t you stick to the main point?”

“All right—I don’t care where he comes out, so he comes
out; and Jim don’t, either, I reckon. But there’s one
thing, anyway—Jim’s too old to be dug out with a case-knife.
He won’t last.”

“Yes he will last, too. You don’t reckon it’s
going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt
foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?”

“Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to, because it
mayn’t take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New
Orleans. He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his
next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we
can’t resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By
rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can’t.
Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we
really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on,
to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can
snatch him out and rush him away the first time there’s an alarm.
Yes, I reckon that ’ll be the best way.”

“Now, there’s sense in that,” I says. "Letting
on don’t cost nothing; letting on ain’t no trouble; and if it’s
any object, I don’t mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty
year. It wouldn’t strain me none, after I got my hand in.
So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives.”

“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out
of.”

“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,”
I says, “there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking
under the weather-boarding behind the smoke-house.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:

“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run
along and smouch the knives—three of them.” So I done
it.

---

CHAPTER XXXVI.

AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the
lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile
of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way,
about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said
he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it,
and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know
there was any hole there, because Jim’s counter-pin hung down most
to the ground, and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see
the hole. So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight;
and then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t
see we’d done anything hardly. At last I says:

“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight
year job, Tom Sawyer.”

He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.
Then he says:

“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t a-going to work. If
we was prisoners it would, because then we’d have as many years as
we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to
dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn’t
get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out,
and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But we can’t
fool along; we got to rush; we ain’t got no time to spare. If
we was to put in another night this way we’d have to knock off for a
week to let our hands get well—couldn’t touch a case-knife
with them sooner.”

“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”

“I’ll tell you. It ain’t right, and it ain’t
moral, and I wouldn’t like it to get out; but there ain’t only
just the one way: we got to dig him out with the picks, and let
on it’s case-knives.”

“Now you’re talking!” I says;
“your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer,”
I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t
care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal
a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I ain’t no ways
particular how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my
nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my
Sunday-school book; and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s
the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that
Sunday-school book out with; and I don’t give a dead rat what the
authorities thinks about it nuther.”

“Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and
letting-on in a case like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t
approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because
right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business
doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better. It might
answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick, without any
letting on, because you don’t know no better; but it wouldn’t
for me, because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife.”

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and
says:

“Gimme a case-knife.”

I didn’t know just what to do—but then I thought. I
scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to
him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular. Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and
made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as
long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for
it. When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his
level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn’t come it, his
hands was so sore. At last he says:

“It ain’t no use, it can’t be done. What you
reckon I better do? Can’t you think of no way?”

“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain’t regular.
Come up the stairs, and let on it’s a lightning-rod.”

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,
for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung
around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin
plates. Tom says it wasn’t enough; but I said nobody wouldn’t
ever see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they’d fall in the
dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole—then we could
tote them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was
satisfied. Then he says:

“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”

“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it
done.”

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard
of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he
said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn’t no need
to decide on any of them yet. Said we’d got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one
of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard Jim
snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn’t wake him. Then we
whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the
job was done. We crept in under Jim’s bed and into the cabin,
and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim
awhile, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up
gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and
called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for
having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right
away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed
him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our
plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an
alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away,
sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and
talked over old times awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and
when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him,
and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat,
and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

“Now I know how to fix it. We’ll send you some
things by them.”

I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the
most jackass ideas I ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to
me; went right on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we’d have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and
other large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the
lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we
would put small things in uncle’s coat-pockets and he must steal
them out; and we would tie things to aunt’s apron-strings or put
them in her apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would
be and what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the
shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he
couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white
folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would
do it all just as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good
sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed,
with hands that looked like they’d been chawed. Tom was in
high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the
most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would
keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get
out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more
he got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out
to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And
he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in his
pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat’s
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim’s pan, and we went along with Nat to see
how it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most
mashed all his teeth out; and there warn’t ever anything could a
worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was
only just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always
getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but
what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a
couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim’s bed; and they kept
on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn’t hardly
room in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that
lean-to door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches”
once, and keeled over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan
like he was dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of
Jim’s meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out
himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed he’d fixed
the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and
petting him, and asking him if he’d been imagining he saw something
again. He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:

“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool, but if I didn’t
b’lieve I see most a million dogs, er devils, er some’n, I
wisht I may die right heah in dese tracks. I did, mos’ sholy.
Mars Sid, I felt um—I felt um, sah; dey was all
over me. Dad fetch it, I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s
on one er dem witches jis’ wunst—on’y jis’ wunst—it’s
all I’d ast. But mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme
’lone, I does.”

Tom says:

“Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just
at this runaway nigger’s breakfast-time? It’s because
they’re hungry; that’s the reason. You make them a witch
pie; that’s the thing for you to do.”

“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s I gwyne to make ’m a
witch pie? I doan’ know how to make it. I hain’t
ever hearn er sich a thing b’fo’.”

“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”

“Will you do it, honey?—will you? I’ll wusshup de
groun’ und’ yo’ foot, I will!”

“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you, and you’ve
been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be
mighty careful. When we come around, you turn your back; and then
whatever we’ve put in the pan, don’t you let on you see it at
all. And don’t you look when Jim unloads the pan—something
might happen, I don’t know what. And above all, don’t
you handle the witch-things.”

“Hannel ‘M, Mars Sid? What is you a-talkin’
’bout? I wouldn’ lay de weight er my finger on um, not f’r
ten hund’d thous’n billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”

---

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THAT was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the
rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags,
and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and
scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as
well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it
full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of
shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his
name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in
Aunt Sally’s apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t’other
we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on the bureau,
because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway
nigger’s house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom
dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat-pocket, and Aunt
Sally wasn’t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn’t hardly
wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one
hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with
the other, and says:

“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat
all what has become of your other shirt.”

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard
piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the
road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the
children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry
out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around
the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about
a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half
price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right again—it