The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tom Sawyer Abroad, By Mark Twain

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Tom Sawyer Abroad

By Mark Twain

Contents

CHAPTER I.
TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES

Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?best circuit kits for 10 year olds under 10 dollars I mean theadventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim free andTom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn’t. It only just p’isoned himfor more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came back upthe river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the villagereceived us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybodyhurrah’d and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer hadalways been hankering to be.

For a while he wassatisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tiltedup his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some called himTom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to bust. You see helaid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went down the river on araft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by the steamboat both ways.The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but land! they just knuckled to thedirt before TOM.

Well, I don’t know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn’tbeen for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim, andkind o’ good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his age,and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty yearshe’d been the only man in the village that had a reputation—I meana reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of it, andit was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had told about thatjourney over a million times and enjoyed it every time. And now comes along aboy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring and gawking over histravels, and it just give the poor old man the high strikes. It made him sickto listen to Tom, and to hear the people say “My land!” “Didyou ever!” “My goodness sakes alive!” and all such things;but he couldn’t pull away from it, any more than a fly that’s gotits hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest, the poorold cretur would chip in on hissame old travels and work them for allthey were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn’t go for much, andit was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings, and then theold man again—and so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying tobeat out the other.

You see, Parsons’ travels happened like this: When he first got to bepostmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for somebody hedidn’t know, and there wasn’t any such person in the village. Well,he didn’t know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter stayedand stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave him aconniption. The postage wasn’t paid on it, and that was another thing toworry about. There wasn’t any way to collect that ten cents, and hereckon’d the gov’ment would hold him responsible for it and maybeturn him out besides, when they found he hadn’t collected it. Well, atlast he couldn’t stand it any longer. He couldn’t sleep nights, hecouldn’t eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet heda’sn’t ask anybody’s advice, for the very person he askedfor advice might go back on him and let the gov’ment know about theletter. He had the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good; if hehappened to see a person standing over the place it’d give him the coldshivers, and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night tillthe town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it out andbury it in another place. Of course, people got to avoiding him and shakingtheir heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, theyjudged he had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn’tknow what, and if he had been a stranger they would’ve lynched him.

Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn’t stand it any longer; so hemade up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President ofthe United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not keeping backan atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the wholegov’ment, and say, “Now, there she is—do with me whatyou’re a mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man andnot deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a familythat must starve and yet hadn’t had a thing to do with it, which is thewhole truth and I can swear to it.”

So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some stage-coaching,but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took him three weeks to getto Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of villages and four cities. He wasgone ’most eight weeks, and there never was such a proud man in thevillage as he when he got back. His travels made him the greatest man in allthat region, and the most talked about; and people come from as much as thirtymiles back in the country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just tolook at him—and there they’d stand and gawk, and he’d gabble.You never see anything like it.

Well, there wasn’t any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler;some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat had seenthe most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom was short inlongitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was about a stand-off; soboth of them had to whoop up their dangerous adventures, and try to get aheadthatway. That bullet-wound in Tom’s leg was a tough thing for NatParsons to buck against, but he bucked the best he could; and at adisadvantage, too, for Tom didn’t set still as he’d orter done, tobe fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked his limp while Natwas painting up the adventure that hehad in Washington; for Tom neverlet go that limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, andkept it good as new right along.

Nat’s adventure was like this; I don’t know how true it is; maybehe got it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that hedidknow how to tell it. He could make anybody’s flesh crawl, andhe’d turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes womenand girls got so faint they couldn’t stick it out. Well, it was this way,as near as I can remember:

He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to thePresident’s house with his letter, and they told him the President was upto the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia—not a minute tolose if he wanted to catch him. Nat ’most dropped, it made him so sick.His horse was put up, and he didn’t know what to do. But just then alongcomes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his chance. He rushesout and shouts: “A half a dollar if you git me to the Capitol in half anhour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty minutes!”

“Done!” says the darky.

Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping anda-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it wassomething awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on for life anddeath, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in the air, and thebottom fell out, and when it come down Nat’s feet was on the ground, andhe see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn’t keep up withthe hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work for all he wasworth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs fairly fly. He yelledand shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the crowds along the street, forthey could see his legs spinning along under the coach, and his head andshoulders bobbing inside through the windows, and he was in awful danger; butthe more they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled and lashed thehorses and shouted, “Don’t you fret, I’se gwine to git youdah in time, boss; I’s gwine to do it, sho’!” for you see hethought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldn’t hearanything for the racket he was making. And so they went ripping along, andeverybody just petrified to see it; and when they got to the Capitol at last itwas the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. The horseslaid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all dust and rags andbarefooted; but he was in time and just in time, and caught the President andgive him the letter, and everything was all right, and the President give him afree pardon on the spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead ofone, because he could see that if he hadn’t had the hack hewouldn’t’a’ got there in time, nor anywhere near it.

It wasa powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work hisbullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.

Well, by and by Tom’s glory got to paling down gradu’ly, on accountof other things turning up for the people to talk about—first ahorse-race, and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus,and on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it alwaysdoes, and by that time there wasn’t any more talk about Tom, so to speak,and you never see a person so sick and disgusted.

Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day out, andwhen I asked him what washe in such a state about, he said it’most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and himgetting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a namefor himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always thinking, buthe was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.

So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and pretty soonhe struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free andgenerous that way. There’s a-plenty of boys that’s mighty good andfriendly when you’vegot a good thing, but when a good thinghappens to come their way they don’t say a word to you, and try to hog itall. That warn’t ever Tom Sawyer’s way, I can say that for him.There’s plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around youwhen you’ve got an apple and beg the core off of you; but whenthey’ve got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you givethem a core one time, they say thank you ’most to death, but thereain’t a-going to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with;all you got to do is to wait.

Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was. It wasa crusade.

“We went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told uswhat it was. It was a crusade.”

“What’s a crusade?” I says.

He looked scornful, the way he’s always done when he was ashamed of aperson, and says:

“Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don’t know what a crusadeis?”

“No,” says I, “I don’t. And I don’t care to,nuther. I’ve lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too.But as soon as you tell me, I’ll know, and that’s soon enough. Idon’t see any use in finding out things and clogging up my head with themwhen I mayn’t ever have any occasion to use ’em. There was LanceWilliams, he learned how to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his gravefor him. Now, then, what’s a crusade? But I can tell you one thing beforeyou begin; if it’s a patent-right, there’s no money in it. BillThompson he—”

“Patent-right!” says he. “I never see such an idiot. Why, acrusade is a kind of war.”

I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and wentright on, perfectly ca’m.

“A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim.”

“Which Holy Land?”

“Why, the Holy Land—there ain’t but one.”

“What do we want of it?”

“Why, can’t you understand? It’s in the hands of the paynim,and it’s our duty to take it away from them.”

“How did we come to let them git hold of it?”

“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it. They always hadit.”

“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”

“Why of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”

I studied over it, but couldn’t seem to git at the right of it, no way. Isays:

“It’s too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine,and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to—”

“Oh, shucks! you don’t know enough to come in when it rains, HuckFinn. It ain’t a farm, it’s entirely different. You see, it’slike this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that’s all theydoown; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made itholy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it.It’s a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to marchagainst them and take it away from them.”

“Why, it does seem to me it’s the most mixed-up thing I ever see!Now, if I had a farm and another person—”

“Don’t I tell you it hasn’t got anything to do with farming?Farming is business, just common low-down business: that’s all it is,it’s all you can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, andtotally different.”

“Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?”

“Certainly; it’s always been considered so.”

Jim he shook his head, and says:

“Mars Tom, I reckon dey’s a mistake about it somers—deymos’ sholy is. I’s religious myself, en I knows plenty religiouspeople, but I hain’t run across none dat acts like dat.”

It made Tom hot, and he says:

“Well, it’s enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headedignorance! If either of you’d read anything about history, you’dknow that Richard Cur de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lotsmore of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked andhammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take theirland away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time—and yethere’s a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods ofMissouri setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of itthan they did! Talk about cheek!”

Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim feltpretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn’t been quite so chipper. Icouldn’t say nothing, and Jim he couldn’t for a while; then hesays:

“Well, den, I reckon it’s all right; beca’se ef deydidn’t know, dey ain’t no use for po’ ignorant folks like usto be trying to know; en so, ef it’s our duty, we got to go en tackle iten do de bes’ we can. Same time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as MarsTom. De hard part gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain’t been’quainted wid and dat hain’t done him no harm. Dat’s it, yousee. Ef we wuz to go ’mongst ’em, jist we three, en say we’shungry, en ast ’em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey’s jist likeyuther people. Don’t you reckon dey is? Why, dey’dgive it,I know dey would, en den—”

“Then what?”

“Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain’t no use, wecan’tkill dem po’ strangers dat ain’t doin’ usno harm, till we’ve had practice—I knows it perfectly well, MarsTom—’deed I knows it perfectly well. But ef we takes a’ axeor two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de river to-night arter demoon’s gone down, en kills dat sick fam’ly dat’s over on theSny, en burns dey house down, en—”

“Oh, you make me tired!” says Tom. “I don’t want toargue any more with people like you and Huck Finn, that’s alwayswandering from the subject, and ain’t got any more sense than to try toreason out a thing that’s pure theology by the laws that protect realestate!”

Now that’s just where Tom Sawyer warn’t fair. Jim didn’t meanno harm, and I didn’t mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he wasright and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the howofit, and that was all; and the only reason he couldn’t explain it so wecould understand it was because we was ignorant—yes, and pretty dull,too, I ain’t denying that; but, land! that ain’t no crime, I shouldthink.

But he wouldn’t hear no more about it—just said if we had tackledthe thing in the proper spirit, he would ’a’ raised a couple ofthousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me alieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the wholepaynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the world in a glorylike sunset. But he said we didn’t know enough to take the chance when wehad it, and he wouldn’t ever offer it again. And he didn’t. When heonce got set, you couldn’t budge him.

But I didn’t care much. I am peaceable, and don’t get up rows withpeople that ain’t doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim wassatisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.

Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott’s book, which he wasalways reading. And it wasa wild notion, because in my opinion he nevercould’ve raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would’vegot licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could makeit out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rockytime of it.

CHAPTER II.
THE BALLOON ASCENSION

Well, Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots about’em somewheres, and he had to shove ’em aside. So at last he wasabout in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to talk a good deal about theballoon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted togo down and see what it looked like, but couldn’t make up his mind. Butthe papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn’t gohe mightn’t ever have another chance to see a balloon; and next, he foundout that Nat Parsons was going down to see it, and that decided him, of course.He wasn’t going to have Nat Parsons coming back bragging about seeing theballoon, and him having to listen to it and keep quiet. So he wanted me and Jimto go too, and we went.

It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of things, andwasn’t like any balloon you see in pictures. It was away out toward theedge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of Twelfth street; and there was a bigcrowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the man,—a lean palefeller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes, you know,—and theykept saying it wouldn’t go. It made him hot to hear them, and he wouldturn on them and shake his fist and say they was animals and blind, but someday they would find they had stood face to face with one of the men that liftsup nations and makes civilizations, and was too dull to know it; and right hereon this spot their own children and grandchildren would build a monument to himthat would outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument.And then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and askhim what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to not doit, and what was his sister’s cat’s grandmother’s name, andall the things that a crowd says when they’ve got hold of a feller thatthey see they can plague. Well, some things they said wasfunny,—yes, and mighty witty too, I ain’t denying that,—butall the same it warn’t fair nor brave, all them people pitching on one,and they so glib and sharp, and him without any gift of talk to answer backwith. But, good land! what did he want to sass back for? You see, itcouldn’t do him no good, and it was just nuts for them. They hadhim, you know. But that was his way. I reckon he couldn’t help it; he wasmade so, I judge. He was a good enough sort of cretur, and hadn’t no harmin him, and was just a genius, as the papers said, which wasn’t hisfault. We can’t all be sound: we’ve got to be the way we’remade. As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all, and so theywon’t take people’s advice, but always go their own way, whichmakes everybody forsake them and despise them, and that is perfectly natural.If they was humbler, and listened and tried to learn, it would be better forthem.

The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and hadwater-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in, and abody could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went aboard, and therewas twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old Nat Parsons wasthere, too. The professor kept fussing around getting ready, and the peoplewent ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old Nat he was the last. Of courseit wouldn’t do to let him go out behind us. We mustn’t budgetill he was gone, so we could be last ourselves.

But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big shout, andturned around—the city was dropping from under us like a shot! It made mesick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and couldn’t say aword, and Tom didn’t say nothing, but looked excited. The city went ondropping down, and down, and down; but we didn’t seem to be doing nothingbut just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got smaller and smaller,and the city pulled itself together, closer and closer, and the men and wagonsgot to looking like ants and bugs crawling around, and the streets like threadsand cracks; and then it all kind of melted together, and there wasn’t anycity any more it was only a big scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a bodycould see up the river and down the river about a thousand miles, though ofcourse it wasn’t so much. By and by the earth was a ball—just around ball, of a dull color, with shiny stripes wriggling and winding aroundover it, which was rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the earth wasround like a ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitionso’ hers, and of course I paid no attention to that one, because I couldsee myself that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. I used to go upon the hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because I reckonthe best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for yourself,and not take anybody’s say-so. But I had to give in now that the widderwas right. That is, she was right as to the rest of the world, but shewarn’t right about the part our village is in; that part is the shape ofa plate, and flat, I take my oath!

The professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he brokeloose now, and he was mighty bitter. He says something like this:

“Idiots! They said it wouldn’t go; and they wanted to examine it,and spy around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobodyknows the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it’sa new power—a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth!Steam’s foolishness to it! They said I couldn’t go to Europe. ToEurope! Why, there’s power aboard to last five years, and feed for threemonths. They are fools! What do they know about it? Yes, and they said myair-ship was flimsy. Why, she’s good for fifty years! I can sail theskies all my life if I want to, and steer where I please, though they laughedat that, and said I couldn’t. Couldn’t steer! Come here, boy;we’ll see. You press these buttons as I tell you.”

He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him thewhole thing in nearly no time; and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He made himfetch the ship down ’most to the earth, and had him spin her along soclose to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the farmers, and heareverything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out printed bills to themthat told about the balloon, and said it was going to Europe. Tom got so hecould steer straight for a tree till he got nearly to it, and then dart up andskin right along over the top of it. Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her;and he done it first-rate, too, and set her down in the prairies as soft aswool. But the minute we started to skip out the professor says, “No, youdon’t!” and shot her up in the air again. It was awful. I begun tobeg, and so did Jim; but it only give his temper a rise, and he begun to ragearound and look wild out of his eyes, and I was scared of him.

Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled about theway he was treated, and couldn’t seem to git over it, and especiallypeople’s saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and at theirsaying she warn’t simple and would be always getting out of order. Getout of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn’t any more getout of order than the solar sister.

“He said he would sail his balloon around the world”

He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me thecold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to yelling andscreaming, and then he swore the world shouldn’t ever have his secret atall now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail his balloon aroundthe globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea,and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, andhere was night coming on!

“And here was night coming on!”

He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, andhe laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his oldpepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling aroundthere trying to land her, he would kill him.

We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn’t saymuch—only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something orbust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and lonesome.We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, andthe farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, andwished we could be down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them likea ghost, and never left a track.

Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a latefeel, and a late smell, too—about a two-o’clock feel, as near as Icould make out—Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must beasleep, and we’d better—

“Better what?” I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over,because I knowed what he was thinking about.

“Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship,” he says.

I says: “No, sir! Don’ you budge, Tom Sawyer.”

And Jim—well, Jim was kind o’ gasping, he was so scared. He says:

“Oh, Mars Tom, don’t!Ef you teches him, we’sgone—we’s gone sho’! I ain’t gwine anear him, not fornothin’ in dis worl’. Mars Tom, he’s plumb crazy.”

Tom whispers and says—“That’s whywe’ve got todo something. If he wasn’t crazy I wouldn’t give shucks to beanywhere but here; you couldn’t hire me to get out—now thatI’ve got used to this balloon and over the scare of being cut loose fromthe solid ground—if he was in his right mind. But it’s no goodpolitics, sailing around like this with a person that’s out of his head,and says he’s going round the world and then drown us all. We’vegotto do something, I tell you, and do it before he wakes up, too, orwe mayn’t ever get another chance. Come!”

But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said wewouldn’t budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see ifhe couldn’t get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged andbegged him not to, but it warn’t no use; so he got down on his hands andknees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath andwatching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than ever, andit did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to theprofessor’s head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in hisface and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward theprofessor’s feet where the steering-buttons was. Well, he got there allsafe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked downsomething that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an’ soft inthe bottom, and lay still. The professor stirred, and says, “What’sthat?” But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutterand mumble and nestle, like a person that’s going to wake up, and Ithought I was going to die, I was so worried and scared.

Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I ’most cried, I was so glad. Sheburied herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark wecouldn’t see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear theprofessor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We wasafraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and nohelp; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands on ourknees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down ’mongst my otherworks, because I couldn’t tell in the dark but it might be the professor!which I thought it was.

Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a personcould be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You can’tland a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on raining, for Ididn’t want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so awfuluncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the rest ofthe night, which wasn’t long, though it did seem so; and at daybreak itcleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forestsand fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle standing sober andthinking. Next, the sun come a-blazing up gay and splendid, and then we beganto feel rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all asleep.

CHAPTER III.
TOM EXPLAINS

We went to sleep about four o’clock, and woke up about eight. Theprofessor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us somebreakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. That was aboutthe middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfyyourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. It makesa body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with agenius. We got to talking together.

There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says:

“Tom, didn’t we start east?”

“Yes.”

“How fast have we been going?”

“Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round.Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety,sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three hundredany time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing the rightdirection, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find it.”

“Well, then, it’s just as I reckoned. The professor lied.”

“Why?”

“Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois,oughtn’t we?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, we ain’t.”

“What’s the reason we ain’t?”

“I know by the color. We’re right over Illinois yet. And you cansee for yourself that Indiana ain’t in sight.”

“I wonder what’s the matter with you, Huck. You know by thecolor?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“What’s the color got to do with it?”

“It’s got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana ispink. You show me any pink down here, if you can. No, sir; it’sgreen.”

“Indiana pink?Why, what a lie!”

“It ain’t no lie; I’ve seen it on the map, and it’spink.”

You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. He says:

“Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck Finn, I would jump over.Seen it on the map! Huck Finn, did you reckon the States was the same colorout-of-doors as they are on the map?”

“Tom Sawyer, what’s a map for? Ain’t it to learn youfacts?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, how’s it going to do that if it tells lies?That’s what I want to know.”

“Shucks, you muggins! It don’t tell lies.”

“It don’t, don’t it?”

“No, it don’t.”

“All right, then; if it don’t, there ain’t no two States thesame color. You git around thatif you can, Tom Sawyer.”

He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell you, I felt pretty good, forTom Sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his leg andsays:

“I tell you!dat’s smart, dat’s right down smart.Ain’t no use, Mars Tom; he got you distime, sho’!” Heslapped his leg again, and says, “My lan’, but it was smartone!”

I never felt so good in my life; and yet I didn’t know I was sayinganything much till it was out. I was just mooning along, perfectly careless,and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never thinkingofsuch a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. Why, it was just asmuch a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was just the same way it iswhen a person is munching along on a hunk of corn-pone, and not thinking aboutanything, and all of a sudden bites into a di’mond. Now all thatheknows first off is that it’s some kind of gravel he’s bitinto; but he don’t find out it’s a di’mond till he gits itout and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and has alook at it, and then he’s surprised and glad—yes, and proud too;though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain’tentitled to as much credit as he would ’a’ been if he’d beenhuntingdi’monds. You can see the difference easy if you think itover. You see, an accident, that way, ain’t fairly as big a thing as athing that’s done a-purpose. Anybody could find that di’mond inthat corn-pone; but mind you, it’s got to be somebody that’s gotthat kind of a corn-pone. That’s where that feller’s creditcomes in, you see; and that’s where mine comes in. I don’t claim nogreat things—I don’t reckon I could ’a’ done itagain—but I done it that time; that’s all I claim. And Ihadn’t no more idea I could do such a thing, and warn’t any morethinking about it or trying to, than you be this minute. Why, I was just asca’m, a body couldn’t be any ca’mer, and yet, all of asudden, out it come. I’ve often thought of that time, and I can rememberjust the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. I can see itall: beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds andhundreds of miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheresunder us, here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart onhis little table, and Tom’s cap flopping in the rigging where it was hungup to dry. And one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten footoff, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and arailroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees andfarms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a littlepuff of white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost forgot it,you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle. And we left thebird and the train both behind, ’waybehind, and done it easy,too.

But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorantblatherskites, and then he says:

“Suppose there’s a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist ismaking a picture of them. What is the mainthing that that artist hasgot to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute youlook at them, hain’t he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go andpaint bothof them brown? Certainly you don’t. He paints one ofthem blue, and then you can’t make no mistake. It’s just the samewith the maps. That’s why they make every State a different color; itain’t to deceive you, it’s to keep you from deceivingyourself.”

But I couldn’t see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jimshook his head, and says:

“Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is,you’d wait a long time before you’d fetch one er demin toback up a fac’. I’s gwine to tell you, den you kin see foryou’self. I see one of ’em a-paintin’ away, one day, down inole Hank Wilson’s back lot, en I went down to see, en he waspaintin’ dat old brindle cow wid de near horn gone—you knows de oneI means. En I ast him what he’s paintin’ her for, en he say when hegit her painted, de picture’s wuth a hundred dollars. Mars Tom, he coulda got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah, if you’llb’lieve me, he jes’ shuck his head, dat painter did, en went ona-dobbin’. Bless you, Mars Tom, deydon’t knownothin’.”

Tom lost his temper. I notice a person ’most always does that’s gotlaid out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we’d feelbetter. Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glassand looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the clock,and then at the turnip again, and says:

“That’s funny! That clock’s near about an hour fast.”

So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and it wasan hour fast too. That puzzled him.

“That’s a mighty curious thing,” he says. “Idon’t understand it.”

Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it was anhour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to come out kindergaspy like, and he says:

“Ger-reat Scott, it’s the longitude!”

I says, considerably scared:

“Well, what’s been and gone and happened now?”

“Why, the thing that’s happened is that this old bladder has slidover Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end ofPennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there.”

“Tom Sawyer, you don’t mean it!”

“Yes, I do, and it’s dead sure. We’ve covered about fifteendegrees of longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and themclocks are right. We’ve come close on to eight hundred miles.”

I didn’t believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my backjust the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn’t take much short oftwo weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his mind andstudying. Pretty soon he says:

“Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?”

“Yes, they’re right.”

“Ain’t yo’ watch right, too?”

“She’s right for St. Louis, but she’s an hour wrong forhere.”

“Mars Tom, is you tryin’ to let on dat de time ain’t desameeverywheres?”

“No, it ain’t the same everywheres, by a long shot.”

Jim looked distressed, and says:

“It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I’s right downashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you’s been raised.Yassir, it’d break yo’ Aunt Polly’s heart to hear you.”

Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn’t say nothing,and Jim went on:

“Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it.Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain’ dey bofe hischildren? ’Cose dey is. Well, den! is he gwine toscriminate’twixt ’em?”

“Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain’t nodiscriminating about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black,and makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?”

Jim see the p’int. He was stuck. He couldn’t answer. Tom says:

“He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this casehereain’t no discrimination of his, it’s man’s. TheLord made the day, and he made the night; but he didn’t invent the hours,and he didn’t distribute them around. Man did that.”

“Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?”

“Certainly.”

“Who tole him he could?”

“Nobody. He never asked.”

Jim studied a minute, and says:

“Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn’t ’a’ tuck no sichresk. But some people ain’t scared o’ nothin’. Dey bangsright ahead; deydon’t care what happens. So den dey’sallays an hour’s diff’unce everywhah, Mars Tom?”

“An hour? No! It’s four minutes difference for every degree oflongitude, you know. Fifteen of ’em’s an hour, thirty of’em’s two hours, and so on. When it’s one clock Tuesdaymorning in England, it’s eight o’clock the night before in NewYork.”

Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was insulted. Hekept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted himon the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the worst of his feelings, andthen he says:

“Mars Tom talkin’ sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Mondayin t’other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain’t no place tojoke—up here whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get twodays inter one day? Can’t git two hours inter one hour, kin you?Can’t git two niggers inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can’t git twogallons of whisky inter a one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, ’twouldstrain de jug. Yes, en even den you couldn’t, I don’t believe. Why,looky here, Huck, s’posen de Choosday was New Year’s—now den!is you gwine to tell me it’s dis year in one place en las’ year int’other, bofe in de identical same minute? It’s de beatenestrubbage! I can’t stan’ it—I can’t stan’ to heartell ’bout it.” Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tomsays:

“Nowwhat’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”

Jim could hardly speak, but he says:

“Mars Tom, you ain’t jokin’, en it’s so?”

“No, I’m not, and it is so.”

Jim shivered again, and says:

“Den dat Monday could be de las’ day, en dey wouldn’t be nolas’ day in England, en de dead wouldn’t be called. Wemustn’t go over dah, Mars Tom. Please git him to turn back; I wants to bewhah—”

All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot everything andbegun to gaze. Tom says:

“Ain’t that the—” He catched his breath, then says:“It is, sure as you live! It’s the ocean!”

That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified buthappy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. Tom keptmuttering:

“Atlantic Ocean—Atlantic. Land, don’t it sound great! Andthat’s it—and weare looking at it—we! Why,it’s just too splendid to believe!”

Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was acity—and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around oneedge; and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute aboutit, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying behind, andhere we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone. Then wewoke up, I tell you!

We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to turnback and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and wewent, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt.

The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the edgeof the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean—millions ofmiles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and white sprays blowing fromthe wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight, wallowing around and laying over,first on one side and then on t’other, and sticking their bows under andthen their sterns; and before long there warn’t no ships at all, and wehad the sky and the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place I eversee and the lonesomest.

CHAPTER IV.
STORM

And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty andawful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves.All around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come together; yes, amonstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead center of it—plumb inthe center. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made anydifference, we couldn’t seem to git past that center no way. Icouldn’t see that we ever gained an inch on that ring. It made a bodyfeel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable.

Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low voice,and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less talky, till atlast the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and“thunk,” as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time.

The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up and puta kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant and he was takingthe sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he ciphered a little andlooked in a book, and then he begun to carry on again. He said lots of wildthings, and, among others, he said he would keep up this hundred-mile gait tillthe middle of to-morrow afternoon, and then he’d land in London.

“The professor said he would keep up thishundred-mile gait till tomorrow”

We said we would be humbly thankful.

He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us along look of his blackest kind—one of the maliciousest and suspiciousestlooks I ever see. Then he says:

“You want to leave me. Don’t try to deny it.”

“You want to leave me. Don’t try to denyit.”

We didn’t know what to say, so we held in and didn’t say nothing atall.

He went aft and set down, but he couldn’t seem to git that thing out ofhis mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try tomake us answer him, but we dasn’t.

It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me Icouldn’t stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By andby Tom pinched me and whispers:

“Look!”

I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. Ididn’t like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, andpretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and stormy. Hewent on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to mutter, and thewind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it was awful. It got soblack we couldn’t see him any more, and wished we couldn’t hearhim, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn’t still ten minutestill we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise again, so wecould tell where he was. By and by there was a flash of lightning, and we seehim start to get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard him scream out inthe dark:

“They don’t want to go to England. All right, I’ll change thecourse. They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall—andnow!”

I ’most died when he said that. Then he was still again—still solong I couldn’t bear it, and it did seem to me the lightningwouldn’t evercome again. But at last there was a blessed flash,and there he was, on his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us.My, but his eyes was terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says,“Overboard yougo!” but it was already pitch-dark again, andI couldn’t see whether he got him or not, and Tom didn’t make asound.

There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I seeTom’s head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on therope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor let offa shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark again, and Jimgroaned out, “Po’ Mars Tom, he’s a goner!” and made ajump for the professor, but the professor warn’t there.

Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, andthen another that was ’way below, and you could only justhear it;and I heard Jim say, “Po’ Mars Tom!”

Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could ’a’ countedfour thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees,with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was crying.Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I was glad,because I didn’t want to see. But when the next flash come, I waswatching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the ladder,and it was Tom!

“Come up!” I shouts; “come up, Tom!”

His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn’t make out whathe said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:

“No, he’s down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?”

Of course, all this in the dark.

“Huck, who is you hollerin’ at?”

“I’m hollerin’ at Tom.”

“Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po’ MarsTom—” Then he let off an awful scream, and flung his head and hisarms back and let off another one, because there was a white glare just then,and he had raised up his face just in time to see Tom’s, as white assnow, rise above the gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it wasTom’s ghost, you see.

Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it washim, and not his ghost, hehugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like hewas gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:

“What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn’t you come up atfirst?”

“I dasn’t, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but Ididn’t know who it was in the dark. It could ’a’ been you, itcould ’a’ been Jim.”

That was the way with Tom Sawyer—always sound. He warn’t coming uptill he knowed where the professor was.

The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful theway the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and the windsung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. One second youcouldn’t see your hand before you, and the next you could count thethreads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching andtossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like that is the loveliestthing there is, but it ain’t at its best when you are up in the sky andlost, and it’s wet and lonesome, and there’s just been a death inthe family.

“The thunder boomed, and the lightning glared, and thewind screamed in the rigging”

We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor professor;and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him andtreated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, and hadn’t afriend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding his mind away andgoing deranged. There was plenty of clothes and blankets and everything at theother end, but we thought we’d ruther take the rain than go meddling backthere.

CHAPTER V.
LAND

We tried to make some plans, but we couldn’t come to no agreement. Me andJim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by thetime daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far toward Englandthat we might as well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the glory ofsaying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, andwe begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers andwent to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The sea was sparkling likedi’monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all dryagain.

We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was thatthere was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood. Then Tomwas disturbed. He says:

“You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got tostay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she’llwander around and go wherever the wind wants her to.”

“Well,” I says, “what’s she been doingsince—er—since we had the accident?”

“Wandering,” he says, kinder troubled—“wandering,without any doubt. She’s in a wind now that’s blowing her south ofeast. We don’t know how long that’s been going on, either.”

So then he p’inted her east, and said he would hold her there till werousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body couldwant; he couldn’t ’a’ been better fixed. There wasn’tno milk for the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you couldwant, and a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars andmatches; and wine and liquor, which warn’t in our line; and books, andmaps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end ofrubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure signthat he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too. Yes, theprofessor was well enough fixed.

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all up intofour-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I took hisplace, and he got out the professor’s papers and pens and wrote a letterhome to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, anddated it “In the Welkin, approaching England,” and folded ittogether and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote abovethe direction, in big writing, “From Tom Sawyer, theErronort,” and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster,when it come along in the mail. I says:

“Tom Sawyer, this ain’t no welkin, it’s a balloon.”

“Well, now, who saidit was a welkin, smarty?”

“You’ve wrote it on the letter, anyway.”

“What of it? That don’t mean that the balloon’s thewelkin.”

“Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?”

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind, but hecouldn’t find nothing, so he had to say:

“I don’t know, and nobody don’t know. It’s just a word,and it’s a mighty good word, too. There ain’t many that lays overit. I don’t believe there’s anythat does.”

“Shucks!” I says. “But what does itmean?—that’s the p’int.”

“I don’t know what it means, I tell you. It’s a word thatpeople uses for—for—well, it’s ornamental. They don’tput ruffles on a shirt to keep a person warm, do they?”

“Course they don’t.”

“But they put them on, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin’sthe ruffle on it.”

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

“Now, Mars Tom, it ain’t no use to talk like dat; en, moreover,it’s sinful. You knows a letter ain’t no shirt, en dey ain’tno ruffles on it, nuther. Dey ain’t no place to put ’em on; youcan’t put em on, and dey wouldn’t stay ef you did.”

“Oh doshut up, and wait till something’s started that youknow something about.”

“Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can’t mean to say I don’t knowabout shirts, when, goodness knows, I’s toted home de washin’ eversence—”

“I tell you, this hasn’t got anything to do with shirts. Ionly—”

“Why, Mars Tom, you said yo’self dat a letter—”

“Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as ametaphor.”

That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says—rather timid,because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:

“Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?”

“A metaphor’s a—well, it’s a—a—ametaphor’s an illustration.” He see thatdidn’t githome, so he tried again. “When I say birds of a feather flocks together,it’s a metaphorical way of saying—”

“But dey don’t!, Mars Tom. No, sir, ’deed deydon’t. Dey ain’t no feathers dat’s more alike den a bluebirden a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches dem birds together,you’ll—”

“Oh, give us a rest! You can’t get the simplest little thingthrough your thick skull. Now don’t bother me any more.”

Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for catchingTom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he was a goner,because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. You see, hehad killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that’s the way to find outabout birds. That’s the way people does that writes books about birds,and loves them so that they’ll go hungry and tired and take any amount oftrouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornithologers, and Icould have been an ornithologer myself, because I always loved birds andcreatures; and I started out to learn how to be one, and I see a bird settingon a limb of a high tree, singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open,and before I thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight downfrom the limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he wasdead, and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way andthat, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes,and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! Icouldn’t see nothing more for the tears; and I hain’t nevermurdered no creature since that warn’t doing me no harm, and Iain’t going to.

But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the subject upagain, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when a person made abig speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people made the welkin ring.He said they always said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so heallowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well, that seemed sensible enough,so I was satisfied, and said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good humoragain, and he says:

“Well, it’s all right, then; and we’ll let bygones bebygones. I don’t know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land inLondon we’ll make it ring, anyway, and don’t you forget it.”

He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said it wasa mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom Sawyer theTraveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we pulled throughall right, and so he wouldn’t give shucks to be a traveler now.

Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and we feltpretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the glasses, likeColumbus discovering America. But we couldn’t see nothing but ocean. Theafternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still there warn’t noland anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it would come outall right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a higher level so wewouldn’t hit any steeples or mountains in the dark.

It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim’s; but Tom stayed up,because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land, anddidn’t stand no regular watch.

Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked over,and there was the land sure enough—land all around, as far as you couldsee, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn’t know how long we’dbeen over it. There warn’t no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, andTom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a deadca’m; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea andrough, it would ’a’ looked smooth, all the same, in the night, thatway.

We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and huntedeverywheres for London, but couldn’t find hair nor hide of it, nor anyother settlement—nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was cleanbeat. He said it warn’t his notion of England; he thought England lookedlike America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have breakfast,and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We cut the breakfastpretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along down, the weather beganto moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. But it kept onmoderating, and in a precious little while it was ’most too moderate. Wewas close down now, and just blistering!

We settled down to within thirty foot of the land—that is, it was land ifsand is land; for this wasn’t anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumbdown the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazinggood—that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hotembers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we heard Jimshout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making signs, andyelling. We couldn’t make out what he said, but we was scared anyway, andbegun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close enough, we understoodthe words, and they made me sick:

“Run! Run fo’ yo’ life! Hit’s a lion; I kin see himthoo de glass! Run, boys; do please heel it de bes’ you kin. He’sbu’sted outen de menagerie, en dey ain’t nobody to stop him!”

“Run! Run fo’ yo’ life!”

It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could onlyjust gasp along the way you do in a dream when there’s a ghost gaining onyou.

Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as soonas I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim had cleanlost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along up and told meto follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with everylope, and my legs shook so I dasn’t try to take one of them out of therounds for fear the other one would give way under me.

“And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me”

But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little, andstopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet aboveground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and roaring andspringing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it about a quarter ofan inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to be out of his reach, perfectlydelicious, and made me feel good and thankful all up one side; but I washanging there helpless and couldn’t climb, and that made me feelperfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. It is most seldom that aperson feels so mixed like that; and it is not to be recommended, either.

Tom asked me what he’d better do, but I didn’t know. He asked me ifI could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion behind.I said I could if he didn’t go no higher than he was now; but if he wenthigher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, “Take a goodgrip,” and he started.

“Don’t go so fast,” I shouted. “It makes my headswim.”

He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided over thesand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it isuncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and not asound.

But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up. Hisnoise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from everydirection, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under me,jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and so wewent skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they could tohelp us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts come, without aninvite, and they started a regular riot down there.

We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn’t ever git away from them atthis gait, and I couldn’t hold on forever. So Tom took a think, andstruck another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box revolver, andthen sail away while the others stopped to fight over the carcass. So hestopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the fusswas going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, and they helped me aboard;but by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more. Andwhen they see we was really gone and they couldn’t get us, they sat downon their hams and looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as muchas a person could do not to see theirside of the matter.

CHAPTER VI.
IT’S A CARAVAN

I was so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I madestraight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a bodycouldn’t get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give thecommand to soar, and Jim started her aloft.

We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was breezyand pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight again. Tom hadbeen setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and says:

“I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We’re in theGreat Sahara, as sure as guns!”

He was so excited he couldn’t hold still; but I wasn’t. I says:

“Well, then, where’s the Great Sahara? In England or inScotland?”

“’Tain’t in either; it’s in Africa.”

Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end ofinterest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn’tmore than half believe it. I couldn’t, you know; it seemed too awful faraway for us to have traveled.

But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions and thesand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could ’a’ found out,before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he hadthought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:

“These clocks. They’re chronometers. You always read about them insea voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping St.Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the afternoonby my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this Grinnage clock.Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven o’clock. Now Inoticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down, and it was half-pastfive o’clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 11 A.M. by my watch andthe other clock. You see, the sun rose and set by my watch in St. Louis, andthe Grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we’ve come so far east that itcomes within less than half an hour of setting by the Grinnage clock now, andI’m away out—more than four hours and a half out. You see, thatmeant that we was closing up on the longitude of Ireland, and would strike itbefore long if we was p’inted right—which we wasn’t. No, sir,we’ve been a-wandering—wandering ’way down south of east, andit’s my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map. You see how theshoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how fast we’ve traveled;if we had gone straight east we would be long past England by this time. Youwatch for noon, all of you, and we’ll stand up, and when we can’tcast a shadow we’ll find that this Grinnage clock is coming mighty closeto marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we’re in Africa; and it’s justbully.”

Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:

“Mars Tom, I reckon dey’s a mistake som’er’s,hain’t seen no niggers yit.”

“That’s nothing; they don’t live in the desert. What is that,’way off yonder? Gimme a glass.”

He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across thesand, but he couldn’t guess what it was.

“Well,” I says, “I reckon maybe you’ve got a chance nowto find out whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one ofthese lines here, that’s on the map, that you call meridians oflongitude, and we can drop down and look at its number, and—”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did yous’pose there’s meridians of longitude on the earth?”

“Tom Sawyer, they’re set down on the map, and you know it perfectlywell, and here they are, and you can see for yourself.”

“Of course they’re on the map, but that’s nothing; thereain’t any on the ground.”

“Tom, do you know that to be so?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, then, that map’s a liar again. I never see such a liar asthat map.”

He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his opinion,too, and next minute we’d ’a’ broke loose on anotherargument, if Tom hadn’t dropped the glass and begun to clap his handslike a maniac and sing out:

“Camels!—Camels!”

So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was disappointed, andsays:

“Camels your granny; they’re spiders.”

“Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? Youdon’t ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven’t gotanything to reflect with. Don’t you know we’re as much as amile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three milesaway? Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you’d like togo down and milk one of ’em. But they’re camels, just the same.It’s a caravan, that’s what it is, and it’s a milelong.”

“Well, then, let’s go down and look at it. I don’t believe init, and ain’t going to till I see it and know it.”

“All right,” he says, and give the command:

“Lower away.”

As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was camels,sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with bales strappedto them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a thing like a shawlbound over their heads and hanging down with tassels and fringes; and some ofthe men had long guns and some hadn’t, and some was riding and some waswalking. And the weather—well, it was just roasting. And how slow theydid creep along! We swooped down now, all of a sudden, and stopped about ahundred yards over their heads.

“We swooped down, now, all of a sudden”

The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs, somebegun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered every whichway, and so did the camels.

We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to thecool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to get togetherand form the procession again; then they started along, but we could see by theglasses that they wasn’t paying much attention to anything but us. Wepoked along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by and by we see a bigsand mound, and something like people the other side of it, and there wassomething like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his head up everynow and then, and seemed to be watching the caravan or us, we didn’t knowwhich. As the caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushedto the other men and horses—for that is what they was—and we seethem mount in a hurry; and next, here they come, like a house afire, some withlances and some with long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could.

They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both sidescrashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another popping ofguns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you could only catchglimpses of them struggling together. There must ’a’ been sixhundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they broke up intogangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and scampering around,and laying into each other like everything; and whenever the smoke cleared alittle you could see dead and wounded people and camels scattered far and wideand all about, and camels racing off in every direction.

“The last man to go snatched up a child, and carriedit off in front of him on his horse”

At last the robbers see they couldn’t win, so their chief sounded asignal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering across theplain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it off in front ofhim on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging after him, and followedhim away off across the plain till she was separated a long ways from herpeople; but it warn’t no use, and she had to give it up, and we see hersink down on the sand and cover her face with her hands. Then Tom took thehellum, and started for that yahoo, and we come a-whizzing down and made aswoop, and knocked him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarredconsiderable, but the child wasn’t hurt, but laid there working its handsand legs in the air like a tumble-bug that’s on its back and can’tturn over. The man went staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn’tknow what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air bythis time.

“We come a-whizzing down, and made a swoop, andknocked him out of the saddle, child and all”

We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn’t. Wecould see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed downon her knees; so of course she hadn’t seen the performance, and thoughther child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half a mile from herpeople, so we thought we might go down to the child, which was about a quarterof a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the caravan people could gitto us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned they had enough business ontheir hands for one while, anyway, with the wounded. We thought we’dchance it, and we did. We swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down theladder and fetched up the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in anoble good humor, too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbledoff of a horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her andtolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he wasclose back of her the child goo-goo’d, the way a child does, and sheheard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kidand snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and then snatchedoff a gold chain and hung it around Jim’s neck, and hugged him again, andjerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and Jim heshoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky andthe woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders andthe child with its arms locked around her neck. And there she stood, as long aswe was in sight a-sailing away in the sky.

CHAPTER VII.
TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA

“Noon!” says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot aroundhis feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve thedifference didn’t amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right northof us or right south of us, one or t’other, and he reckoned by theweather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north,too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the world,unless it might be some kinds of birds—a wild pigeon, maybe, or arailroad.

But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a hundredmiles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the world thatcould do that—except one, and that was a flea.

“A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain’t a bird, stricklyspeakin’—”

“He ain’t a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?”

“I don’t rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he’s only jista’ animal. No, I reckon dat won’t do, nuther, he ain’t bigenough for a’ animal. He mus’ be a bug. Yassir, dat’s what heis, he’s a bug.”

“I bet he ain’t, but let it go. What’s your secondplace?”

“Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but aflea don’t.”

“He don’t, don’t he? Come, now, what isa longdistance, if you know?”

“Why, it’s miles, and lots of ’em—anybody knowsdat.”

“Can’t a man walk miles?”

“Yassir, he kin.”

“As many as a railroad?”

“Yassir, if you give him time.”

“Can’t a flea?”

“Well—I s’pose so—ef you gives him heaps oftime.”

“Now you begin to see, don’t you, that distanceain’tthe thing to judge by, at all; it’s the time it takes to go the distanceinthat counts, ain’t it?”

“Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn’t ’a’b’lieved it, Mars Tom.”

“And where’s your railroad, alongside of aflea?”

“It’s a matter of proportion, that’s what it is; andwhen you come to gauge a thing’s speed by its size, where’s yourbird and your man and your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest mancan’t run more than about ten miles in an hour—not much over tenthousand times his own length. But all the books says any common ordinarythird-class flea can jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and hecan make five jumps a second too—seven hundred and fifty times his ownlength, in one little second—for he don’t fool away any timestopping and starting—he does them both at the same time; you’llsee, if you try to put your finger on him. Now that’s a common, ordinary,third-class flea’s gait; but you take an Eyetalian first-class,that’s been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn’t everknowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more than threehundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps everysecond, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a mancould go fifteen hundred times his own length in a second—say, a mile anda half. It’s ninety miles a minute; it’s considerable more thanfive thousand miles an hour. Where’s your man now?—yes, andyour bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don’t amountto shucks ’longside of a flea. A flea is just a comet b’iled downsmall.”

“Where’s your man now?”

Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:

“Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin’ en no lies, MarsTom?”

“Yes, they are; they’re perfectly true.”

“Well, den, honey, a body’s got to respec’ a flea. Iain’t had no respec’ for um befo’, sca’sely, but deyain’t no gittin’ roun’ it, dey do deserve it, dat’scertain.”

“Well, I bet they do. They’ve got ever so much more sense, andbrains, and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur inthe world. A person can learn them ’most anything; and they learn itquicker than any other cretur, too. They’ve been learnt to haul littlecarriages in harness, and go this way and that way and t’other wayaccording to their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing itas exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They’ve been learntto do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S’pose you couldcultivate a flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartnessa-growing and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener andkeener, in the same proportion—where’d the human race be, do youreckon? That flea would be President of the United States, and youcouldn’t any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning.”

“That flea would be President of the United States,and you couldn’t prevent it”

“My lan’, Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much todebeas’. No, sir, I never had no idea of it, and dat’s defac’.”

“There’s more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any othercretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He’s the interestingest ofthem all. People have so much to say about an ant’s strength, and anelephant’s, and a locomotive’s. Shucks, they don’t begin witha flea. He can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of themcan come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and isvery particular, and you can’t fool him; his instinct, or his judgment,or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don’t ever make amistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain’t so.There’s folks that he won’t go near, hungry or not hungry, andI’m one of them. I’ve never had one of them on me in mylife.”

“Mars Tom!”

“It’s so; I ain’t joking.”

“Well, sah, I hain’t ever heard de likes o’ datbefo’.” Jim couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t; so wehad to drop down to the sand and git a supply and see. Tom was right. They wentfor me and Jim by the thousand, but not a one of them lit on Tom. Therewarn’t no explaining it, but there it was and there warn’t nogetting around it. He said it had always been just so, and he’d just assoon be where there was a million of them as not; they’d never touch himnor bother him.

We went up to the cold weather to freeze ’em out, and stayed a littlespell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying alongtwenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we’d been doing for the lastfew hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that solemn, peacefuldesert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in us, and themore happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling, and the more we gotto liking the desert, and then loving it. So we had cramped the speed down, asI was saying, and was having a most noble good lazy time, sometimes watchingthrough the glasses, sometimes stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimestaking a nap.

It didn’t seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to findland and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that—clean over it.We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn’t wantto be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it ’most seemed asif I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And alwaysI had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering of me, andscolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and sticking to me, andkeeping after me, and making me do this, and making me do that andt’other, and always selecting out the things I didn’t want to do,and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something else, and justaggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up here in the sky it wasso still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, andstrange things to see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good people, andjust holiday all the time. Land, I warn’t in no hurry to git out and buckat civilization again. Now, one of the worst things about civilization is, thatanybody that gits a letter with trouble in it comes and tells you all about itand makes you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles ofeverybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal ’mostall the time, and it’s such a heavy load for a person. I hate themnewspapers; and I hate letters; and if I had my way I wouldn’t allownobody to load his troubles on to other folks he ain’t acquainted with,on t’other side of the world, that way. Well, up in a balloon thereain’t any of that, and it’s the darlingest place there is.

We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see. Themoon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see a lionstanding all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it seemed like, andhis shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink. That’s the kindof moonlight to have.

Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn’t want to go to sleep.Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it wasright along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened; so welooked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain’tanything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talkedabout. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel, and he comealong in the desert and met a man, and says:

“Have you run across a stray camel to-day?”

And the man says:

“Was he blind in his left eye?”

“Yes.”

“Had he lost an upper front tooth?”

“Yes.”

“Was his off hind leg lame?”

“Yes.”

“Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on theother?”

“Yes, but you needn’t go into no more details—that’sthe one, and I’m in a hurry. Where did you see him?”

“I hain’t seen him at all,” the man says.

“Hain’t seen him at all? How can you describe him so close,then?”

“Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got ameaning to it; but most people’s eyes ain’t any good to them. Iknowed a camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lamein his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it, andhis track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because he onlynibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had lost an upperfront tooth because where he bit into the sod his teeth-print showed it. Themillet-seed sifted out on one side—the ants told me that; the honeyleaked out on the other—the flies told me that. I know all about yourcamel, but I hain’t seen him.”

Jim says:

“Go on, Mars Tom, hit’s a mighty good tale, and powerfulinterestin’.”

“That’s all,” Tom says.

“All?” says Jim, astonished. “What ’comeo’ de camel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mars Tom, don’t de tale say?”

“No.”

Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:

“Well! Ef dat ain’t de beatenes’ tale ever I struck. Jistgits to de place whah de intrust is gittin’ red-hot, en down she breaks.Why, Mars Tom, dey ain’t no sensein a tale dat acts like dat.Hain’t you got no ideawhether de man got de camel back ernot?”

“No, I haven’t.”

I see myself there warn’t no sense in the tale, to chop square off thatway before it come to anything, but I warn’t going to say so, because Icould see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and theway Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don’t thinkit’s fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he’s down. ButTom he whirls on me and says:

“What do youthink of the tale?”

Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did seemto me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped square inthe middle and never got to no place, it really warn’t worth the troubleof telling.

Tom’s chin dropped on his breast, and ’stead of being mad, as Ireckoned he’d be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to beonly sad; and he says:

“Some people can see, and some can’t—just as that man said.Let alone a camel, if a cyclone had gone by, youduffers wouldn’t’a’ noticed the track.”

I don’t know what he meant by that, and he didn’t say; it was justone of his irrulevances, I reckon—he was full of them, sometimes, when hewas in a close place and couldn’t see no other way out—but Ididn’t mind. We’d spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough,he couldn’t git away from that little fact. It graveled him like thenation, too, I reckon, much as he tried not to let on.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DISAPPEARING LAKE

We had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the desert,and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn’t high up.You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the desert, because itcools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting toward dawn, you areskimming along only a little ways above the sand.

We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and now andthen gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring, and thendown on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost right under us we see alot of men and camels laying scattered about, perfectly quiet, like they wasasleep.

We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see thatthey was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush down, too,and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow and stopped, andme and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was men, and women, andchildren. They was dried by the sun and dark and shriveled and leathery, likethe pictures of mummies you see in books. And yet they looked just as human,you wouldn’t ’a’ believed it; just like they was asleep.

Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of themnot, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard. Most of theclothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it tore with a touch,like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying there for years.

Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl beltswith long, silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had their loadson yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the freight out on theground. We didn’t reckon the swords was any good to the dead people anymore, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We took a small box, too,because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we wanted to bury thepeople; but there warn’t no way to do it that we could think of, andnothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away again, of course.

Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on thesand was out of sight, and we wouldn’t ever see them poor people again inthis world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how they come to bethere, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn’t make it out.First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and about till theirfood and water give out and they starved to death; but Tom said no wild animalsnor vultures hadn’t meddled with them, and so that guess wouldn’tdo. So at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn’t think about it nomore, because it made us low-spirited.

“We opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it”

Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile, andsome little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made out ofcurious gold money that we warn’t acquainted with. We wondered if webetter go and try to find them again and give it back; but Tom thought it overand said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they would come andsteal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the temptation in theirway. So we went on; but I wished we had took all they had, so therewouldn’t ’a’ been no temptation at all left.

We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadfulthirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water, but it wasspoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald your mouth.We couldn’t drink it. It was Mississippi river water, the best in theworld, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would help, but no, themud wasn’t any better than the water. Well, we hadn’t been so very,very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost people, but we wasnow, and as soon as we found we couldn’t have a drink, we was more thanthirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a minute before. Why, in alittle while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant like a dog.

Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we’dgot to find an oasis or there warn’t no telling what would happen. So wedone it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms got sotired we couldn’t hold them any more. Two hours—threehours—just gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and youcould see the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a bodydon’t know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through andis certain he ain’t ever going to come to any water any more. At last Icouldn’t stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down onthe locker, and give it up.

But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and shiny,with pa’m-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the waterjust as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything look so good.It was a long ways off, but that warn’t anything to us; we just slappedon a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes; but shestayed the same old distance away, all the time; we couldn’t seem to gainon her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a dream; but wecouldn’t get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone!

Tom’s eyes took a spread, and he says:

“Boys, it was a myridge!” Said it like he was glad. Ididn’t see nothing to be glad about. I says:

“Maybe. I don’t care nothing about its name, the thing I want toknow is, what’s become of it?”

Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn’t speak, but hewanted to ask that question himself if he could ’a’ done it. Tomsays:

“What’s becomeof it? Why, you see yourself it’sgone.”

“Yes, I know; but where’s it gone to?”

He looked me over and says:

“Well, now, Huck Finn, where wouldit go to! Don’t you knowwhat a myridge is?”

“No, I don’t. What is it?”

“It ain’t anything but imagination. There ain’t anythingtoit.”

It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:

“What’s the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer?Didn’t I see the lake?”

“Yes—you think you did.”

“I don’t think nothing about it, I didsee it.”

“I tell you you didn’tsee it either—because itwarn’t there to see.”

It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind ofpleading and distressed:

“Mars Tom, pleasedon’t say sich things in sich an awfultime as dis. You ain’t only reskin’ yo’ own self, butyou’s reskin’ us—same way like Anna Nias en Siffra. De lakewuzdah—I seen it jis’ as plain as I sees you en Huck disminute.”

I says:

“Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first.Now, then!”

“Yes, Mars Tom, hit’s so—you can’t deny it. We all seenit, en dat proveit was dah.”

“Proves it! How does it prove it?”

“Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson mightbe drunk, or dreamy or suthin’, en he could be mistaken; en two might,maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it’sso. Dey ain’t no gittin’ aroun’ dat, en you knows it,Mars Tom.”

“I don’t know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousandmillion people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the otherevery day. Did that prove that the sun doneit?”

“Course it did. En besides, dey warn’t no ’casion to proveit. A body ’at’s got any sense ain’t gwine to doubt it. Dahshe is now—a sailin’ thoo de sky, like she allays done.”

Tom turned on me, then, and says:

“What do yousay—is the sun standing still?”

“Tom Sawyer, what’s the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybodythat ain’t blind can see it don’t stand still.”

“Well,” he says, “I’m lost in the sky with no companybut a passel of low-down animals that don’t know no more than the headboss of a university did three or four hundred years ago.”

It warn’t fair play, and I let him know it. I says:

“Throwin’ mud ain’t arguin’, Tom Sawyer.”

“Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah’s de lakeagi’n!” yelled Jim, just then. “Now, Mars Tom, whatyou gwine to say?”

Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, perfectlyplain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says:

“I reckon you’re satisfied now, Tom Sawyer.”

But he says, perfectly ca’m:

“Yes, satisfied there ain’t no lake there.”

Jim says:

“Don’t!talk so, Mars Tom—it sk’yers me to hearyou. It’s so hot, en you’s so thirsty, dat you ain’t inyo’ right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don’t she look good! ’clahI doan’ know how I’s gwine to wait tell we gits dah, I’ssothirsty.”

“Well, you’ll have to wait; and it won’t do you no good,either, because there ain’t no lake there, I tell you.”

I says:

“Jim, don’t you take your eye off of it, and I won’t,either.”

“’Deed I won’t; en bless you, honey, I couldn’t ef Iwanted to.”

We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, butnever gaining an inch on it—and all of a sudden it was gone again! Jimstaggered, and ’most fell down. When he got his breath he says, gaspinglike a fish:

“Mars Tom, hit’s a ghos’, dat’s what it is, en Ihopes to goodness we ain’t gwine to see it no mo’. Dey’sbeena lake, en suthin’s happened, en de lake’s dead, enwe’s seen its ghos’; we’s seen it twiste, en dat’sproof. De desert’s ha’nted, it’s ha’nted, sho; oh, MarsTom, le’ ’s git outen it; I’d ruther die den have de nightketch us in it ag’in en de ghos’ er dat lake come a-mournin’aroun’ us en we asleep en doan’ know de danger we’sin.”

“Ghost, you gander! It ain’t anything but air and heat andthirstiness pasted together by a person’s imagination. If I—gimmethe glass!”

He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

“It’s a flock of birds,” he says. “It’s gettingtoward sundown, and they’re making a bee-line across our track forsomewheres. They mean business—maybe they’re going for food orwater, or both. Let her go to starboard!—Port your hellum! Hard down!There—ease up—steady, as you go.”

We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out afterthem. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when we hadfollowed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty discouraged, and wasthirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

“Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of thebirds.”

Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was mostcrying, and says:

“She’s dah ag’in, Mars Tom, she’s dah ag’in, en Iknows I’s gwine to die, ’case when a body sees a ghos’ dethird time, dat’s what it means. I wisht I’d never come in disballoon, dat I does.”

He wouldn’t look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because Iknowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then Iwouldn’t look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and gosome other way, but he wouldn’t, and said we was ignorant superstitiousblatherskites. Yes, and he’ll git come up with, one of these days, I saysto myself, insulting ghosts that way. They’ll stand it for a while,maybe, but they won’t stand it always, for anybody that knows aboutghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they are.

So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By and byTom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:

“Nowget up and look, you sapheads.”

We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!—clear,and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest sightthat ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and shady grovesof big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so peaceful andcomfortable—enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful.

Jim didcry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and outof his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but Tomand Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot, andI’ve tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever begunwith that water.

Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me, and meand Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a foot-raceand a boxing-mill, and I don’t reckon I ever had such a good time in mylife. It warn’t so very hot, because it was close on to evening, and wehadn’t any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in school, and intowns, and at balls, too, but there ain’t no sense in them when thereain’t no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness around.

“Lions a-comin’!—lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo’life, Huck!”

Oh, and didn’t we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up theladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off—he always done it wheneverhe got excited and scared; and so now, ’stead of just easing the ladderup from the ground a little, so the animals couldn’t reach it, he turnedon a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky beforehe got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. Then hestopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was, so highthat the lions looked like pups, and we was drifting off on the wind.

But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down, andback toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a camp-meeting, andI judged he had lost hishead, too; for he knowed I was too scared toclimb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and things?

But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down towithin thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the center, andsung out:

“Leggo, and drop!”

I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile toward thebottom; and when I come up, he says:

“Now lay on your back and float till you’re rested and got yourpluck back, then I’ll dip the ladder in the water and you can climbaboard.”

I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started offsomewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would ’a’come along, too, and might ’a’ kept us hunting a safe place till Igot tuckered out and fell.

“And all this time the lions and tigers was sortingout the clothes”

And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and tryingto divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was amisunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hogmore than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you never seeanything like it in the world. There must ’a’ been fifty of them,all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting andtearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn’t tell which waswhich, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was dead andsome was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around on thebattlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others looking upat us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and have some fun, butwhich we didn’t want any.

As for the clothes, they warn’t any, any more. Every last rag of them wasinside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don’treckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there wasknives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk andmarbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn’t caring. All that wasbothering me was, that all we had now was the professor’s clothes, a bigenough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came acrossany, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and thingsaccording. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and Jim was a kind ofjack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two down for usthat would answer.

CHAPTER IX.
TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT

Still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand.Most of the professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new waythat somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you fetch Missouribeefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in thecoolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down into the lion market and seehow we could make out there.

We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach ofthe animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up adead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We had to keep thecongregation off with the revolver, or they would ’a’ took a handin the proceedings and helped.

We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the restoverboard. Then we baited some of the professor’s hooks with the freshmeat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient distanceabove the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see. It was amost amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish, and hotcorn-pone. I don’t want nothing better than that.

“We catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see.”

We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a monstroustall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn’t a branch on it from thebottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a feather-duster. It wasa pa’m-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa’m-tree the minute he seeit, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn’tnone. There was only big loose bunches of things like oversized grapes, and Tomallowed they was dates, because he said they answered the description in theArabian Nights and the other books. Of course they mightn’t be, and theymight be poison; so we had to wait a spell, and watch and see if the birds etthem. They done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good.

By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead animals.They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion that was beinggnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove the bird away, itdidn’t do no good; he was back again the minute the lion was busy.

The big birds come out of every part of the sky—you could make them outwith the glass while they was still so far away you couldn’t see themwith your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn’t find out the meat wasthere by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain’tthat an eye for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of deadlions couldn’t look any bigger than a person’s finger-nail, and hecouldn’t imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so faroff.

It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe theywarn’t kin. But Jim said that didn’t make no difference. He said ahog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned maybe alion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He thought likelya lion wouldn’t eat his own father, if he knowed which was him, butreckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon hungry, and eat hismother-in-law any time. But reckoningdon’t settle nothing. Youcan reckon till the cows come home, but that don’t fetch you to nodecision. So we give it up and let it drop.

Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was music.A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom allowed wasjackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and all the wholebiling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a picture in themoonlight that was more different than any picture I ever see. We had a lineout and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn’t stand no watch, butall turned in and slept; but I was up two or three times to look down at theanimals and hear the music. It was like having a front seat at a menagerie fornothing, which I hadn’t ever had before, and so it seemed foolish tosleep and not make the most of it; I mightn’t ever have such a chanceagain.

We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day inthe deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that none ofthe animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for dinner. We wasgoing to leave the next day, but couldn’t, it was too lovely.

The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, welooked back and watched that place till it warn’t nothing but just aspeck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a friendthat you ain’t ever going to see any more.

Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says:

“Mars Tom, we’s mos’ to de end er de Desert now, Ispeck.”

“Why?”

“Well, hit stan’ to reason we is. You knows how long we’sbeen a-skimmin’ over it. Mus’ be mos’ out o’san’. Hit’s a wonder to me dat it’s hilt out as long as ithas.”

“Shucks, there’s plenty sand, you needn’t worry.”

“Oh, I ain’t a-worryin’, Mars Tom, only wonderin’,dat’s all. De Lord’s got plenty san’, I ain’tdoubtin’ dat; but nemmine, He ain’t gwyne to was’eitjist on dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert’s plenty big enough now,jist de way she is, en you can’t spread her out no mo’ ’doutwas’in’ san’.”

“Oh, go ’long! we ain’t much more than fairly startedacross this Desert yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain’tit? Ain’t it, Huck?”

“Yes,” I says, “there ain’t no bigger one, Idon’t reckon.”

“Well,” he says, “this Desert is about the shape of theUnited States, and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, itwould cover the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There’d bea little corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Floridasticking out like a turtle’s tail, and that’s all. We’ve tookCalifornia away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of thePacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her edgeon the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past New Yorksix hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean.”

I say:

“Good land! have you got the documents for that, Tom Sawyer?”

“Yes, and they’re right here, and I’ve been studying them.You can look for yourself. From New York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. Fromone end of the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert’sbulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in underwhere the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland, Ireland,France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of thebrave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the Great Sahara, andyou would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left.”

“Well,” I says, “it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows thatthe Lord took as much pains makin’ this Desert as makin’ the UnitedStates and all them other countries.”

Jim says: “Huck, dat don’ stan’ to reason. I reckon disDesert wa’n’t made at all. Now you take en look at it likedis—you look at it, and see ef I’s right. What’s a desertgood for? ’Taint good for nuthin’. Dey ain’t no way to makeit pay. Hain’t dat so, Huck?”

“Yes, I reckon.”

“Hain’t it so, Mars Tom?”

“I guess so. Go on.”

“Ef a thing ain’t no good, it’s made in vain, ain’tit?”

“Yes.”

“Now, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer medat.”

“Well—no, He don’t.”

“Den how come He make a desert?”

“Well, go on. How didHe come to make it?”

“Mars Tom, I b’lieve it uz jes like when you’s buildin’a house; dey’s allays a lot o’ truck en rubbish lef’ over.What does you do wid it? Doan’ you take en k’yart it off en dump itinto a ole vacant back lot? ’Course. Now, den, it’s my opinion hitwas jes like dat—dat de Great Sahara warn’t made at all, she jeshappen’.”

I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one Jim evermade. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments is, theyain’t nothing but theories, after all, and theories don’tprove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you aretuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something thereain’t no way tofind out. And he says:

“There’s another trouble about theories: there’s always ahole in them somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It’s just sowith this one of Jim’s. Look what billions and billions of stars thereis. How does it come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and noneleft over? How does it come there ain’t no sand-pile up there?”

But Jim was fixed for him and says:

“What’s de Milky Way?—dat’s what I want to know.What’s de Milky Way? Answer me dat!”

In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It’s only an opinion, it’sonly myopinion and others may think different; but I said it then and Istand to it now—it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landedTom Sawyer. He couldn’t say a word. He had that stunned look of a personthat’s been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as forpeople like me and Jim, he’d just as soon have intellectual intercoursewith a catfish. But anybody can say that—and I notice they always do,when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that end ofthe subject.

So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the more wecompared it with this and that and t’other thing, the more nobler andbigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among thefiggers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the Empire ofChina. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on the map, andthe room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to think of, and Isays:

“Why, I’ve heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but Inever knowed before how important she was.”

Then Tom says:

“Important! Sahara important! That’s just the way with some people.If a thing’s big, it’s important. That’s all the sensethey’ve got. All they can see is size. Why, look at England.It’s the most important country in the world; and yet you could put it inChina’s vest-pocket; and not only that, but you’d have thedickens’s own time to find it again the next time you wanted it. And lookat Russia. It spreads all around and everywhere, and yet ain’t no moreimportant in this world than Rhode Island is, and hasn’t got half as muchin it that’s worth saving.”

Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the world.Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited, and took alook, and says:

“That’s it—it’s the one I’ve been looking for,sure. If I’m right, it’s the one the dervish took the man into andshowed him all the treasures.”

So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian Nights.

CHAPTER X.
THE TREASURE-HILL

Tom said it happened like this.

A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing hotday, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, andornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run across a camel-driverwith a hundred camels, and asked him for some a’ms. But the cameldriverhe asked to be excused. The dervish said:

“Don’t you own these camels?”

“Yes, they’re mine.”

“Are you in debt?”

“Who—me? No.”

“Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain’t in debt isrich—and not only rich, but very rich. Ain’t it so?”

The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then the dervish says:

“God has made you rich, and He has made me poor. He has His reasons, andthey are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich shall helpHis poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my need, and Hewill remember this, and you will lose by it.”

That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born hoggishafter money and didn’t like to let go a cent; so he begun to whine andexplain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a full freight downto Balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn’t git no return freight,and so he warn’t making no great things out of his trip. So the dervishstarts along again, and says:

“All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you’ve madea mistake this time, and missed a chance.”

Of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had missed,because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish, and beggedhim so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the dervish gave in,and says:

“Do you see that hill yonder? Well, in that hill is all the treasures ofthe earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good kind heartand a noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just that man,I’ve got a kind of a salve I could put on his eyes and he could see thetreasures and get them out.”

“The camel-driver in the treasure-cave”

So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and took on,and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a man, and saidhe could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn’t ever describedso exact before.

“Well, then,” says the dervish, “all right. If we load thehundred camels, can I have half of them?”

The driver was so glad he couldn’t hardly hold in, and says:

“Now you’re shouting.”

So they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and rubbedthe salve on the driver’s right eye, and the hill opened and he went in,and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels sparkling likeall the stars in heaven had fell down.

So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till hecouldn’t carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them startedoff with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running andovertook the dervish and says:

“You ain’t in society, you know, and you don’t really needall you’ve got. Won’t you be good, and let me have ten of yourcamels?”

“Well,” the dervish says, “I don’t know but what yousay is reasonable enough.”

So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with hisforty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him again, andwhines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him, saying thirty camelloads of treasures was enough to see a dervish through, because they live verysimple, you know, and don’t keep house, but board around and give theirnote.

But that warn’t the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and comingtill he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he wassatisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn’t ever forgit thedervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn’t been so good to himbefore, and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and startedoff again.

But do you know, it warn’t ten minutes till the camel-driver wasunsatisfied again—he was the lowdownest reptyle in sevencounties—and he come a-running again. And this time the thing he wantedwas to get the dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye.

“Why?” said the dervish.

“Oh, you know,” says the driver.

“Know what?”

“Well, you can’t fool me,” says the driver.“You’re trying to keep back something from me, you know it mightywell. You know, I reckon, that if I had the salve on the other eye I could seea lot more things that’s valuable. Come—please put it on.”

The dervish says:

“I wasn’t keeping anything back from you. I don’t mindtelling you what would happen if I put it on. You’d never see again.You’d be stone-blind the rest of your days.”

But do you know that beat wouldn’t believe him. No, he begged and begged,and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told him toput it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure enough he was as blindas a bat in a minute.

Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him; andsays:

“Good-bye—a man that’s blind hain’t got no use forjewelry.”

And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander aroundpoor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the Desert.

Jim said he’d bet it was a lesson to him.

“Yes,” Tom says, “and like a considerable many lessons a bodygets. They ain’t no account, because the thing don’t ever happenthe same way again—and can’t. The time Hen Scovil fell down thechimbly and crippled his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson tohim. What kind of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn’t climbchimblies no more, and he hadn’t no more backs to break.”

“All de same, Mars Tom, dey issich a thing as learnin’ byexpe’ence. De Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire.”

“Well, I ain’t denying that a thing’s a lesson if it’sa thing that can happen twice just the same way. There’s lots of suchthings, and theyeducate a person, that’s what Uncle Abner alwayssaid; but there’s forty millionlots of the other kind—thekind that don’t happen the same way twice—and they ain’t noreal use, they ain’t no more instructive than the small-pox. Whenyou’ve got it, it ain’t no good to find out you ought to beenvaccinated, and it ain’t no good to git vaccinated afterward, because thesmall-pox don’t come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner saidthat the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty orseventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person thatstarted in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that wasalways going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim ordoubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was down on them peoplethat’s all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything thathappens, no matter whether—”

But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a personalways feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other personis admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of course heoughtn’t to go to sleep, because it’s shabby; but the finer aperson talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come tolook at it it ain’t nobody’s fault in particular; both ofthem’s to blame.

Jim begun to snore—soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then astronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water suckingdown the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to it, and somebig coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is choking to death;and when the person has got to that point he is at his level best, and can wakeup a man that is in the next block with a dipperful of loddanum in him, butcan’t wake himself up although all that awful noise of his’nain’t but three inches from his own ears. And that is the curiosest thingin the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to light the candle, and thatlittle bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I knowed what was the reason ofthat, but there don’t seem to be no way to find out. Now there was Jimalarming the whole Desert, and yanking the animals out, for miles and milesaround, to see what in the nation was going on up there; there warn’tnobody nor nothing that was as close to the noise as hewas, and yet hewas the only cretur that wasn’t disturbed by it. We yelled at him andwhooped at him, it never done no good; but the first time there come a littlewee noise that wasn’t of a usual kind it woke him up. No, sir, I’vethought it all over, and so has Tom, and there ain’t no way to find outwhy a snorer can’t hear himself snore.

Jim said he hadn’t been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listenbetter.

Tom said nobody warn’t accusing him.

That made him look like he wished he hadn’t said anything. And he wantedto git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse thecamel-driver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in somethingand wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the camel-driver thehardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and he praised up thedervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with him there, too. But Tomsays:

“I ain’t so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal andgood and unselfish, but I don’t quite see it. He didn’t hunt upanother poor dervish, did he? No, he didn’t. If he was so unselfish, whydidn’t he go in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go alongand be satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with ahundred camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could.”

“Why, Mars Tom, he was willin’ to divide, fair and square; he onlystruck for fifty camels.”

“Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by.”

“Mars Tom, he tolede man de truck would make him bline.”

“Yes, because he knowed the man’s character. It was just the kindof a man he was hunting for—a man that never believes in anybody’sword or anybody’s honorableness, because he ain’t got none of hisown. I reckon there’s lots of people like that dervish. They swindle,right and left, but they always make the other person SEEM to swindle himself.They keep inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain’tno way to git hold of them. Theydon’t put the salve on—oh,no, that would be sin; but they know how to fool youinto putting it on,then it’s you that blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and thecamel-driver was just a pair—a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull,coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals, just the same.”

“Mars Tom, does you reckon dey’s any o’ dat kind o’salve in de worl’ now?”

“Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they’ve got it in NewYork, and they put it on country people’s eyes and show them all therailroads in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub thesalve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with theirrailroads. Here’s the treasure-hill now. Lower away!”

We landed, but it warn’t as interesting as I thought it was going to be,because we couldn’t find the place where they went in to git thetreasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hillitself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou’dn’t’a’ missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way.

And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could come intoa strange big country like this and go straight and find a little hump likethat and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that was almost justlike it, and nothing to help him but only his own learning and his own naturalsmartness. We talked and talked it over together, but couldn’t make outhow he done it. He had the best head on him I ever see; and all he lacked wasage, to make a name for himself equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. Ibet you it would ’a’ crowded either of themto find thathill, with all their gifts, but it warn’t nothing to Tom Sawyer; he wentacross Sahara and put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a nigger outof a bunch of angels.

We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt around theedges, and loaded up the lion’s skin and the tiger’s so as theywould keep till Jim could tan them.

CHAPTER XI.
THE SAND-STORM

We went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon wastouching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string of littleblack figgers moving across its big silver face. You could see them as plain asif they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooleddown our speed and tagged along after it, just to have company, though itwarn’t going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan, and a most bullysight to look at next morning when the sun come a-streaming across the desertand flung the long shadders of the camels on the gold sand like a thousandgrand-daddy-long-legses marching in procession. We never went very near it,because we knowed better now than to act like that and scare people’scamels and break up their caravans. It was the gayest outfit you ever see, forrich clothes and nobby style. Some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the firstwe ever see, and very tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts,and they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinnerconsiderable, I bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain’tnowheres with them for speed.

The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started againabout the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look verycurious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and after thatit begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the air got hot and close, andpretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick and foggy, butfiery and dreadful—like it looks through a piece of red glass, you know.We looked down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan, and a rushingevery which way like they was scared; and then they all flopped down flat inthe sand and laid there perfectly still.

Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide wall,and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was cominglike the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and then it comeharder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces and sting like fire,and Tom sung out:

“It’s a sand-storm—turn your backs to it!”

“In the sand-storm”

We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand beatagainst us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we couldn’tsee a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting on thelockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads out and could hardlybreathe.

Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off acrossthe desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and looked down,and where the caravan was before there wasn’t anything but just the sandocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and camels was smotheredand dead and buried—buried under ten foot of sand, we reckoned, and Tomallowed it might be years before the wind uncovered them, and all that timetheir friends wouldn’t ever know what become of that caravan. Tom said:

“Nowwe know what it was that happened to the people we got theswords and pistols from.”

Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried in asand-storm, and the wild animals couldn’t get at them, and the wind neveruncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn’t fit toeat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a personcould for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this lastcaravan’s death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see, theothers was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with them atall, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the girl, but itwas different with this last caravan. We was huvvering around them a wholenight and ’most a whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly withthem, and acquainted. I have found out that there ain’t no surer way tofind out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. Just sowith these. We kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them puton the finisher. The longer we traveled with them, and the more we got used totheir ways, the better and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder wewas that we run across them. We had come to know some of them so well that wecalled them by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiarand sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their plainnames without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the rightthing. Of course, it wasn’t their own names, but names we give them.There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel JacobMcDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young BushrodButler, and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans andsimmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as soon aswe come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn’t Mister, norJudge, nor nothing, any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie,and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.

And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows,the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn’t cold andindifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down friendly andsociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and the caravan coulddepend on us to be on hand every time, it didn’t make no difference whatit was.

When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet up inthe air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so muchhome-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that night, and Buckand Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest of theprofessor’s duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in andshook a foot up there.

“When they danced we joined in and shook a foot upthere”

But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a funeralthat done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still dawn. Wedidn’t know the diseased, and he warn’t in our set, but that nevermade no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and therewarn’t no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped onhim from up there eleven hundred foot on high.

Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part withthem others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. Wehad knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, and now to havedeath snatch them from right before our faces while we was looking, and leaveus so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big desert, it did hurt so,and we wished we mightn’t ever make any more friends on that voyage if wewas going to lose them again like that.

“The wedding procession”

We couldn’t keep from talking about them, and they was all the timecoming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was allalive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the shinyspearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries lumbering along;we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener than anything elsewe could see them praying, because they don’t allow nothing to preventthat; whenever the call come, several times a day, they would stop right there,and stand up and face to the east, and lift back their heads, and spread outtheir arms and begin, and four or five times they would go down on their knees,and then fall forward and touch their forehead to the ground.

Well, it warn’t good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was intheir life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because itdidn’t do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was goingto live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a betterworld; and Tom kept still and didn’t tell him they was only Mohammedans;it warn’t no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as itwas.

When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had amost powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and Idon’t see why people that can afford it don’t have it more. Andit’s terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so steadybefore.

Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with it;it was good sand, and it didn’t seem good sense to throw it away. Jimsays:

“Mars Tom, can’t we tote it back home en sell it? How long’llit take?”

“Depends on the way we go.”

“Well, sah, she’s wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en Ireckon we’s got as much as twenty loads, hain’t we? How much woulddat be?”

“Five dollars.”

“By jings, Mars Tom, le’s shove for home right on de spot!Hit’s more’n a dollar en a half apiece, hain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, ef dat ain’t makin’ money de easiest ever Istruck! She jes’ rained in—never cos’ us a lick o’work. Le’s mosey right along, Mars Tom.”

But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never heard him.Pretty soon he says:

“Five dollars—sho! Look here, this sand’sworth—worth—why, it’s worth no end of money.”

“How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!”

“Well, the minute people knows it’s genuwyne sand from the genuwyneDesert of Sahara, they’ll just be in a perfect state of mind to git holdof some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for acuriosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all overthe United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We’ve got allof ten thousand dollars’ worth of sand in this boat.”

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo,and Tom says:

“And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back andfetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we’ve carted this wholeDesert over there and sold it out; and there ain’t ever going to be anyopposition, either, because we’ll take out a patent.”

“My goodness,” I says, “we’ll be as rich as Creosote,won’t we, Tom?”

“Yes—Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in thatlittle hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn’t know he waswalking over the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he madethe driver.”

“Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?”

“Well, I don’t know yet. It’s got to be ciphered, and itain’t the easiest job to do, either, because it’s over four millionsquare miles of sand at ten cents a vial.”

Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook hishead and says:

“Mars Tom, we can’t ’ford all dem vials—a kingcouldn’t. We better not try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vialsgwyne to bust us, sho’.”

Tom’s excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account ofthe vials, but it wasn’t. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer,and at last he says:

“Boys, it won’t work; we got to give it up.”

“Why, Tom?”

“On account of the duties.”

I couldn’t make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:

“What isour duty, Tom? Because if we can’t git around it,why can’t we just doit? People often has to.”

But he says:

“Oh, it ain’t that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Wheneveryou strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, youknow—you find a custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comesand rummages among your things and charges a big tax, which they call a dutybecause it’s their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’tpay the duty they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but thatdon’t deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all itis. Now if we try to carry this sand home the way we’re pointed now, wegot to climb fences till we git tired—just frontier afterfrontier—Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so on, and they’ll all whackon a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we can’tgo thatroad.”

“Why, Tom,” I says, “we can sail right over their oldfrontiers; how are theygoing to stop us?”

He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:

“Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?”

I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:

“Well, we’re shut off the other way, too. If we go back the waywe’ve come, there’s the New York custom-house, and that is worsethan all of them others put together, on account of the kind of cargowe’ve got.”

“Why?”

“Well, they can’t raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and whenthey can’t raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand percent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it.”

“There ain’t no sense in that, Tom Sawyer.”

“Who said there was?What do you talk to me like that for, HuckFinn? You wait till I say a thing’s got sense in it before you go toaccusing me of saying it.”

“All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on.”

Jim says:

“Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can’t raise inAmerica, en don’t make no ’stinction ’twix’anything?”

“Yes, that’s what they do.”

“Mars Tom, ain’t de blessin’ o’ de Lord de mos’valuable thing dey is?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Don’t de preacher stan’ up in de pulpit en call it down onde people?”

“Yes.”

“Whah do it come from?”

“From heaven.”

“Yassir! you’s jes’ right, ’deed you is, honey—itcome from heaven, en dat’s a foreign country. Now, den! do dey puta tax on dat blessin’?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Course dey don’t; en so it stan’ to reason dat you’smistaken, Mars Tom. Dey wouldn’t put de tax on po’ truck likesan’, dat everybody ain’t ’bleeged to have, en leave itoff’n de bes’ thing dey is, which nobody can’t git alongwidout.”

Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn’t budge.He tried to wiggle out by saying they had forgotto put on that tax, butthey’d be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and thenthey’d put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. Hesaid there warn’t nothing foreign that warn’t taxed but just thatone, and so they couldn’t be consistent without taxing it, and to beconsistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that they’dleft it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix itbefore they got caught and laughed at.

But I didn’t feel no more interest in such things, as long as wecouldn’t git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim thesame. Tom he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up anotherspeculation for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but itdidn’t do no good, we didn’t believe there was any as big as this.It was mighty hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could’a’ bought a country and started a kingdom and been celebrated andhappy, and now we was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on ourhands. The sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold anddi’monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now Icouldn’t bear the sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and Iknowed I wouldn’t ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, andI didn’t have it there no more to remind us of what we had been and whatwe had got degraded down to. The others was feeling the same way about it thatI was. I knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le’sthrow this truck overboard.

Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so Tom hedivided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and him wouldclear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim he didn’tquite like that arrangement. He says:

“Course I’s de stronges’, en I’s willin’ to do ashare accordin’, but by jings you’s kinder pilin’ it onto oleJim, Mars Tom, hain’t you?”

“Well, I didn’t think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it,and let’s see.”

So Jim reckoned it wouldn’t be no more than fair if me and Tom done atenthapiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, andthen he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to thewestward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from. Then he turnedaround again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was satisfied ifJim was. Jim said he was.

So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for Jim,and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there was and whata raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was powerful glad now thathe had spoke up in time and got the first arrangement altered, for he said thateven the way it was now, there was more sand than enjoyment in his end of thecontract, he believed.

Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to moveup into cooler weather or we couldn’t ’a’ stood it. Me andTom took turn about, and one worked while t’other rested, but therewarn’t nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africadamp, he sweated so. We couldn’t work good, we was so full of laugh, andJim he kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keepmaking up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions, butthey done well enough, Jim didn’t see through them. At last when we gotdone we was ’most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and byJim was ’most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns andspelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on thegunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to apoor old nigger, and he wouldn’t ever forgit us. He was always thegratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He wasonly nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.

CHAPTER XII.
JIM STANDING SIEGE

The next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don’t make no differencewhen you are hungry; and when you ain’t it ain’t no satisfaction toeat, anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain’t no particulardrawback, as far as I can see.

Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeastcourse. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see threelittle sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:

“It’s the pyramids of Egypt.”

It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a pictureof them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them allof a sudden, that way, and find they was real, ’stead ofimaginations, ’most knocked the breath out of me with surprise.It’s a curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big andbully thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, andgets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing solid toit. It’s just so with George Washington, and the same with them pyramids.

And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me to bestretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and had apicture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid coveredthirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, allbuilt out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up in perfectlyregular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see, for just onebuilding; it’s a farm. If it hadn’t been in Sunday-school, I would’a’ judged it was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And hesaid there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with candles,and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in thestomach of that stone mountain, and there you would find a big stone chest witha king in it, four thousand years old. I said to myself, then, if thatain’t a lie I will eat that king if they will fetch him, for evenMethusalem warn’t that old, and nobody claims it.

As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a longstraight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge, a widecountry of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it, and Tom saidit was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile was another thingthat wasn’t real to me. Now I can tell you one thing which is deadcertain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles of yaller sand, allglimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water to look at it, andyou’ve been a considerable part of a week doing it, the green countrywill look so like home and heaven to you that it will make your eyes wateragain.

It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.

And when Jim got so he could believe it wasthe land of Egypt he waslooking at, he wouldn’t enter it standing up, but got down on his kneesand took off his hat, because he said it wasn’t fitten’ for ahumble poor nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses andJoseph and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had amost deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was allstirred up, and says:

“Hit’s de lan’ of Egypt, de lan’ of Egypt, en I’s’lowed to look at it wid my own eyes! En dah’s de river dat wasturn’ to blood, en I’s looking at de very same groun’ whah deplagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en de locus’, en de hail, en whahdey marked de door-pos’, en de angel o’ de Lord come by in dedarkness o’ de night en slew de fust-born in all de lan’ o’Egypt. Ole Jim ain’t worthy to see dis day!”

And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between him andTom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was so full ofhistory—Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob comingdown into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all theminteresting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land was so fullof history that was in hisline, about Noureddin, and Bedreddin, andsuch like monstrous giants, that made Jim’s wool rise, and a raft ofother Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done the things theylet on they done, I don’t believe.

Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs started up,and it warn’t no use to sail over the top of it, because we would go byEgypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass straight for theplace where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted out, and then drop lowand skin along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp lookout. Tom tookthe hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor, and Jim he straddled the bow todig through the fog with his eyes and watch out for danger ahead. We went alonga steady gait, but not very fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solidthat Jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and wetalked low and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:

“Highst her a p’int, Mars Tom, highst her!” and up she wouldskip, a foot or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin,with people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap andstretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could gapand stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him off. By andby, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we a-straining our earsfor sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a little, very sudden, andJim sung out in an awful scare:

“Oh, for de lan’s sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here’s debiggest giant outen de ’Rabian Nights a-comin’ for us!” andhe went over backwards in the boat.

Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man’sface as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a houselooks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must ’a’ beenclear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and Tomhad hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was holding theballoon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got a good long lookup at that awful face.

Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in abegging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took onlyjust a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:

“He ain’t alive, you fools; it’s the Sphinx!”

I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because thegiant’s head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but notdreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of sad,and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It was stone,reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an abused look,and you felt sorrier for it for that.

We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just grand.It was a man’s head, or maybe a woman’s, on a tiger’s body ahundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple betweenits front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for hundreds ofyears, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand away and foundthat little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that cretur; most as muchas it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon.

“Jim standing a siege”

We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him, itbeing a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t’otherdistance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and proportions, andJim he done the best he could, striking all the different kinds of attitudesand positions he could study up, but standing on his head and working his legsthe way a frog does was the best. The further we got away, the littler Jim got,and the grander the Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on adome, as you might say. That’s the way perspective brings out the correctproportions, Tom said; he said Julus Cesar’s niggers didn’t knowhow big he was, they was too close to him.

Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn’t see Jim at allany more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out over theNile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little shabby hutsand things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and gone, and nothingaround it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, which was the sand.

That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking anda-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made us feelquiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over that valley justthat same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to itself for thousands ofyears, and nobody can’t find out what they are to this day.

At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering aroundon that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur’s back, andthen I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom to look. He doneit, and says:

“They’re bugs. No—hold on; they—why, I believethey’re men. Yes, it’s men—men and horses both. They’rehauling a long ladder up onto the Sphinx’s back—now ain’tthat odd? And now they’re trying to lean it up a—there’s somemore puffs of smoke—it’s guns! Huck, they’re afterJim.”

“Rescue of Jim”

We clapped on the power, and went for them a-biling. We was there in no time,and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered every whichway, and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go all holts and fell.We soared up and found him laying on top of the head panting and most tuckeredout, partly from howling for help and partly from scare. He had been standing asiege a long time—a week, hesaid, but it warn’t so, it onlyjust seemed so to him because they was crowding him so. They had shot at him,and rained the bullets all around him, but he warn’t hit, and when theyfound he wouldn’t stand up and the bullets couldn’t git at him whenhe was laying down, they went for the ladder, and then he knowed it was all upwith him if we didn’t come pretty quick. Tom was very indignant, andasked him why he didn’t show the flag and command them to git, inthe name of the United States. Jim said he done it, but they never paid noattention. Tom said he would have this thing looked into at Washington, andsays:

“You’ll see that they’ll have to apologize for insulting theflag, and pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off thateasy.”

Jim says:

“What’s an indemnity, Mars Tom?”

“It’s cash, that’s what it is.”

“Who gits it, Mars Tom?”

“Why, wedo.”

“En who gits de apology?”

“The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take theapology, if we want to, and let the gov’ment take the money.”

“How much money will it be, Mars Tom?”

“Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least threedollars apiece, and I don’t know but more.”

“Well, den, we’ll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de ’pology.Hain’t dat yo’ notion, too? En hain’t it yourn, Huck?”

We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as any, sowe agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I asked Tom ifcountries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says:

“Yes; the little ones does.”

We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared upand roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just like whatthe man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of stairs that startsbroad at the bottom and slants up and comes together in a point at the top,only these stair-steps couldn’t be clumb the way you climb other stairs;no, for each step was as high as your chin, and you have to be boosted up frombehind. The two other pyramids warn’t far away, and the people movingabout on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, we was so high above them.

Tom he couldn’t hold himself he was so worked up with gladness andastonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped history fromevery pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn’t scarcely believe he wasstanding on the very identical spot the prince flew from on the Bronze Horse.It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody give the prince a bronzehorse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him and fly through theair like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the peg,and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to.

When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences thatcomes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorryfor him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let himdown easy, but git stuck and don’t see no way, and before you can pullyour mind together and dosomething, that silence has got in and spreaditself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he was embarrassed, andneither of us couldn’t say a word. Well, Tom he glowered at me a minute,and says:

“Come, out with it. What do you think?”

I says:

“Tom Sawyer, youdon’t believe that, yourself.”

“What’s the reason I don’t? What’s to hender me?”

“There’s one thing to hender you: it couldn’t happen,that’s all.”

“What’s the reason it couldn’t happen?”

“You tell me the reason it couldhappen.”

“This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I shouldreckon.”

“Whyis it?”

“Whyis it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain’t this balloonand the bronze horse the same thing under different names?”

“No, they’re not. One is a balloon and the other’s a horse.It’s very different. Next you’ll be saying a house and a cow is thesame thing.”

“By Jackson, Huck’s got him ag’in! Dey ain’t nowigglin’ outer dat!”

“Shut your head, Jim; you don’t know what you’re talkingabout. And Huck don’t. Look here, Huck, I’ll make it plain to you,so you can understand. You see, it ain’t the mere formthat’s got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar,it’s the principleinvolved; and the principle is the same inboth. Don’t you see, now?”

I turned it over in my mind, and says:

“Tom, it ain’t no use. Principles is all very well, but theydon’t git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can doain’t no sort of proof of what a horse can do.”

“Shucks, Huck, you don’t get the idea at all. Now look here aminute—it’s perfectly plain. Don’t we fly through theair?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Don’t we fly high or fly low, just as we please?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t we steer whichever way we want to?”

“Yes.”

“And don’t we land when and where we please?”

“Yes.”

“How do we move the balloon and steer it?”

“By touching the buttons.”

“NowI reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other casethe moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, theprince turned a peg. There ain’t an atom of difference, you see. I knowedI could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough.”

He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he brokeoff surprised, and says:

“Looky here, Huck Finn, don’t you see it yet?”

I says:

“Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions.”

“Go ahead,” he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.

“As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and thepeg—the rest ain’t of no consequence. A button is one shape, a pegis another shape, but that ain’t any matter?”

“No, that ain’t any matter, as long as they’ve both got thesame power.”

“All right, then. What is the power that’s in a candle and in amatch?”

“It’s the fire.”

“It’s the same in both, then?”

“Yes, just the same in both.”

“All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, whatwill happen to that carpenter shop?”

“She’ll burn up.”

“And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle—will she burnup?”

“Of course she won’t.”

“All right. Now the fire’s the same, both times. Whydoesthe shop burn, and the pyramid don’t?”

“Because the pyramid can’tburn.”

“Aha! and a horse can’t fly!”

“My lan’, ef Huck ain’t got him ag’in! Huck’slanded him high en dry dis time, I tell you! Hit’s de smartes’ trapI ever see a body walk inter—en ef I—”

But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn’t go on, andTom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own argumentag’in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that all hecould manage to say was that whenever he heard me and Jim try to argue it madehim ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing; I was feeling pretty wellsatisfied. When I have got the best of a person that way, it ain’t my wayto go around crowing about it the way some people does, for I consider that ifI was in his place I wouldn’t wish him to crow over me. It’s betterto be generous, that’s what I think.

CHAPTER XIII.
GOING FOR TOM’S PIPE:

By and by we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of thepyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and wentin with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of the pyramidwe found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king,just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was gone, now; somebody hadgot him. But I didn’t take no interest in the place, because there couldbe ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones, but I don’t like no kind.

So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and then wentin a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to Cairo; and all theway the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as ever I see, and had talldate-pa’ms on both sides, and naked children everywhere, and the men wasas red as copper, and fine and strong and handsome. And the city was acuriosity. Such narrow streets—why, they were just lanes, and crowdedwith people with turbans, and women with veils, and everybody rigged out inblazing bright clothes and all sorts of colors, and you wondered how the camelsand the people got by each other in such narrow little cracks, but they doneit—a perfect jam, you see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn’tbig enough to turn around in, but you didn’t have to go in; thestorekeeper sat tailor fashion on his counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, andhad his things where he could reach them to sell, and he was just as good as inthe street, for the camel-loads brushed him as they went by.

Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed menrunning and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod thatdidn’t get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan ridinghorseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath away hisclothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his stomach whilehe went by. I forgot, but a feller helped me to remember. He was one that had arod and run in front.

There was churches, but they don’t know enough to keep Sunday; they keepFriday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when you go in.There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on the stonefloor and making no end of noise—getting their lessons by heart, Tomsaid, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and people that knowsbetter knows enough to not let on. I never see such a big church in my lifebefore, and most awful high, it was; it made you dizzy to look up; our villagechurch at home ain’t a circumstance to it; if you was to put it in there,people would think it was a drygoods box.

What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes onaccounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we found alot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves Whirling Dervishes; andthey did whirl, too. I never see anything like it. They had tall sugar-loafhats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun and spun, round and roundlike tops, and the petticoats stood out on a slant, and it was the prettiestthing I ever see, and made me drunk to look at it. They was all Moslems, Tomsaid, and when I asked him what a Moslem was, he said it was a person thatwasn’t a Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri, though Ididn’t know it before.

We didn’t see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such asweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a most tiresometime to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain before the famine,and when we found it it warn’t worth much to look at, being such an oldtumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss over it than Iwould make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found that place was toomany for me. We passed as much as forty just like it before we come to it, andany of them would ’a’ done for me, but none but just the right onewould suit him; I never see anybody so particular as Tom Sawyer. The minute hestruck the right one he reconnized it as easy as I would reconnize my othershirt if I had one, but how he done it he couldn’t any more tell than hecould fly; he said so himself.

Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned thecadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said it wasout of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it when he gottime. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop, and I wanted Tom togive it up and come next day and git somebody that knowed the town and couldtalk Missourian and could go straight to the place; but no, he wanted to findit himself, and nothing else would answer. So on we went. Then at last theremarkablest thing happened I ever see. The house was gone—gone hundredsof years ago—every last rag of it gone but just one mud brick. Now aperson wouldn’t ever believe that a backwoods Missouri boy thathadn’t ever been in that town before could go and hunt that place overand find that brick, but Tom Sawyer done it. I know he done it, because I seehim do it. I was right by his very side at the time, and see him see the brickand see him reconnize it. Well, I says to myself, how doeshe do it? Isit knowledge, or is it instink?

Now there’s the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain ittheir own way. I’ve ciphered over it a good deal, and it’s myopinion that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. Thereason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with hisname on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and putanother brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn’t know thedifference—but there was a difference, you see. I think that settlesit—it’s mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where theexact placeis for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by theplace it’s in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, notinstink, he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seenit—which he didn’t. So it shows that for all the brag you hearabout knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it forreal unerringness. Jim says the same.

When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young manthere with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket and baggytrousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that could talkEnglish and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to Mecca and Medina andCentral Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day and his keep, and wehired him and left, and piled on the power, and by the time we was throughdinner we was over the place where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea whenPharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by the waters. We stopped, then,and had a good look at the place, and it done Jim good to see it. He said hecould see it all, now, just the way it happened; he could see the Israeliteswalking along between the walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from awayoff yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the Israeliteswent out, and then when they was all in, see the walls tumble together anddrown the last man of them. Then we piled on the power again and rushed awayand huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses broke the tablesof stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and worshipedthe golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could be, and the guideknowed every place as well as I knowed the village at home.

But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a standstill.Tom’s old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and warped thatshe couldn’t hold together any longer, notwithstanding the strings andbandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he didn’t know whatto do. The professor’s pipe wouldn’t answer; it warn’tanything but a mershum, and a person that’s got used to a cob pipe knowsit lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can’tgit him to smoke any other. He wouldn’t take mine, I couldn’tpersuade him. So there he was.

He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could roust outone in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries, but the guide saidno, it warn’t no use, they didn’t have them. So Tom was pretty glumfor a little while, then he chirked up and said he’d got the idea andknowed what to do. He says:

“I’ve got another corn-cob pipe, and it’s a prime one, too,and nearly new. It’s laying on the rafter that’s right over thekitchen stove at home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and getit, and me and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back.”

“But, Mars Tom, we couldn’t ever find de village. I could find depipe, ’case I knows de kitchen, but my lan’, we can’t everfind de village, nur Sent Louis, nur none o’ dem places. We don’tknow de way, Mars Tom.”

That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:

“Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I’ll tell you how. You setyour compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the UnitedStates. It ain’t any trouble, because it’s the first landyou’ll strike the other side of the Atlantic. If it’s daytime whenyou strike it, bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the Floridacoast, and in an hour and three quarters you’ll hit the mouth of theMississippi—at the speed that I’m going to send you. You’llbe so high up in the air that the earth will be curvedconsiderable—sorter like a washbowl turned upside down—andyou’ll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which way, long beforeyou get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi without any trouble. Thenyou can follow the river north nearly, an hour and three quarters, till you seethe Ohio come in; then you want to look sharp, because you’re gettingnear. Away up to your left you’ll see another thread comingin—that’s the Missouri and is a little above St. Louis.You’ll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as you spinalong. You’ll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen minutes, andyou’ll recognize ours when you see it—and if you don’t, youcan yell down and ask.”

“Map of the trip made by Tom Sawyer Erronott 1850”

“Ef it’s dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it—yassir, Iknows we kin.”

The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand hiswatch in a little while.

“Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour,” Tom said.“This balloon’s as easy to manage as a canoe.”

Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and says:

“To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It’s only aboutseven thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it’s over twiceas far.” Then he says to the guide, “I want you both to watch thetell-tale all through the watches, and whenever it don’t mark threehundred miles an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find astorm-current that’s going your way. There’s a hundred miles anhour in this old thing without any wind to help. There’s two-hundred-milegales to be found, any time you want to hunt for them.”

“We’ll hunt for them, sir.”

“See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, andit’ll be p’ison cold, but most of the time you’ll find yourstorm a good deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone—that’sthe ticket for you! You’ll see by the professor’s books that theytravel west in these latitudes; and they travel low, too.”

Then he ciphered on the time, and says—

“Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour—you can make thetrip in a day—twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you’ll be backhere Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and booksand things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There ain’t nooccasion to fool around—I want a smoke, and the quicker you fetch thatpipe the better.”

All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out andthe balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and Tom gave hislast orders:

“It’s 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hoursyou’ll be home, and it’ll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time.When you strike the village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in thewoods, out of sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in thepost-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over yourface so they won’t know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to thekitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen table, andput something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git away, anddon’t let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else. Then you jumpfor the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred miles an hour. Youwon’t have lost more than an hour. You’ll start back at 7 or 8A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3 P.M., MountSinai time.”

Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it:

“THURSDAYAFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer theErronort sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai where the Ark was, andso does Huck Finn, and she will get it to-morrow morning half-past six.”

“TOMSAWYER THEERRONORT”

* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck’s error, notTom’s.—M.T.

“That’ll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come,” hesays. Then he says:

“Stand by! One—two—three—away you go!”

And away she didgo! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second.

Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big plain,and there we camped to wait for the pipe.

The balloon come back all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had catchedJim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened: she sent forTom. So Jim he says:

“Mars Tom, she’s out on de porch wid her eye sot on de skya-layin’ for you, en she say she ain’t gwyne to budge from dah tellshe gits hold of you. Dey’s gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, ’deeddey is.”

So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither.

“Homeward bound”

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