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lost people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a
drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter
of a minute before. Why, in a little 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'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours-three hours-just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see the
quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know what
real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he
ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't stand
it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the 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
water just 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
slapped on a hundredmile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a
dream; but we couldn'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. I didn't see
nothing to be glad about. I says:
"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know
is, what's become of it?"
Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:
"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."
"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"
He looked me over and says:
"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"
"No, I don't. What is it?"
"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it. "
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 DID see it."
"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either-because it warn't there to see."
It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind
of pleading and distressed:
"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis.
You ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us-same way like
Anna Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah-I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you
en Huck dis minute."
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 seen it, en dat
PROVE it was dah."
"Proves it! How does it prove it?"
"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson
might be 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's SO. 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 thousand
million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the
other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?"
"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body
'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now-a sailin' thoo
de sky, like she allays done."
Tom turned on me, then, and says:
"What do YOU say-is the sun standing still?"
"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody
that ain't blind can see it don't stand still."
"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of
low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss 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 lake agi'n!"
yelled Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?"
Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert,
perfectly plain, 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 hear you. It's so hot, en
you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don't
she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we gits dah,
I's SO thirsty."
"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 I wanted to."
We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it-and all of a sudden it was gone
again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he says,
gasping like a fish:
"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch 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's in."
"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I-gimme the glass!"
He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.
"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business-maybe they're going for food or water, 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 after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them,
and when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:
"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."
Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:
"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to
die, 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."
He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because
I knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so
then I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off
and go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of these
days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it for a
while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about
ghosts 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 by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:
"NOW get 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
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable-enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful.
Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot,
and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever
begun with that water.
Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain'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 the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off-he always done it whenever
he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the ladder up
from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a
raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before
he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. Then
he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was,
so high that 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, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, 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 to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over
the center, and sung out:
"Leggo, and drop!"
I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:
"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."
I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' come
along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got tuckered
out and fell.
And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to
hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of
them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting
and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was
which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was
dead. and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around
on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others
looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and
have some fun, but which we didn't want any.
As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them
was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there
was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk
and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big
enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came
across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and
things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and Jim was
a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or
two down for us that would answer.
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 way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you
fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular
and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down into
the lion market and see how we could make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the
reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and
hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We
had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took
a hand in the proceedings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the
rest overboard. Then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the
fresh meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that.
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
featherduster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree
the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one,
but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like
oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they
answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of
course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. 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 being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove the
bird away, it didn'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 out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them with
your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was there by
the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't that an eye
for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions
couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he couldn't
imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was
him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon
hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle
nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you
to no decision. 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 was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and
all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a
picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever
see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't
stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three
times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having a
front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before, and
so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't ever
have such a chance again.
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all
day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see
that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for
dinner. We was going 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,
we looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a
speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a
friend that 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, I speck."
"Why?"
"Well, hit stan' to reason we is. You knows how long we's been
a-skimmin' over it. Mus' be mos' out o' san'. Hit's a wonder to me dat
it's hilt out as long as it has."
"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't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, He ain't gwyne to
WAS'E it jist 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' 'dout
was'in' san'."
"Oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly STARTED across this
Desert yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain't it? Ain't it,
Huck?"
"Yes," I says, "there ain't no bigger one, I don't reckon."
"Well," he says, "this Desert is about the shape of the United States,
and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would cover
the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There'd be a little
corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Florida
sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. We've took California
away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the Pacific
coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her edge on
the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past New York
six 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. From one end of
the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains
3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert's
bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in under
where the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland, Ireland,
France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of the
brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the Great Sahara,
and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left."
"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord
took as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and all
them other countries."
Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis-you look at it, and see
ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey ain't
no way to make it 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't it?"
"Yes."
"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat."
"Well-no, He don't."
"Den how come He make a desert?"
"Well, go on. How DID He 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 it into a ole vacant back lot? 'Course.
Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat-dat de Great Sahara warn't
made at all, she jes HAPPEN'."
I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one
Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments
is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don't prove
nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are
tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there
ain't no way TO find out. And he says:
"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one of
Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it come
that there was just exactly enough starstuff, and none left 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's
only MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I
stand to it now-it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed Tom
Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person
that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for
people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse
with 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 of
the subject.
So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler
and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among
the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the
Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on
the map, and the room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to
think of, and I says:
"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
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 sense they'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 in China's vest-pocket; and not only
that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next time
you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and everywhere,
and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode Island is, and
hasn't got half as much in 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 a look, 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 and showed him all the treasures."
So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.
TOM said it happened like this.
A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one
blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and
hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run
across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms.
But the cameldriver he 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 is rich-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,
and they are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich
shall help His poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my
need, and He will remember this, and you will lose by it."
That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born
hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to whine
and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a full
freight down to 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 dervish starts along again, and says:
"All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you've made a
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 begged him 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
of the earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good
kind heart and 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 the treasures and get them out."
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 said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't
ever described so exact before.
"Well, then," says the dervish, "all right. If we load the hundred
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
rubbed the 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 like all the stars in heaven had fell down.
So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till
he couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them
started off with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come
a-running and overtook the dervish and says:
"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've
got. Won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?"
"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what you say is reasonable
enough."
So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again
with his forty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after
him again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him,
saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish
through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house,
but board around and give their note.
But that warn't the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and coming
till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he
was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the
dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him before,
and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and started off
again.
But do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was
unsatisfied again-he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties-and he
come arunning again. And this time the thing he wanted was 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 mighty well. You know, I reckon, that if I
had the salve on the other eye I could see a 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 mind telling 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 to put it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure
enough he was as blind as a bat in a minute.
Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him;
and says:
"Good-bye-a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry."
And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander
around poor 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 body gets.
They ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way
again-and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled
his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind
of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no
more, and he hadn't no more backs to break."
"All de same, Mars Tom, dey IS sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence.
De Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire."
"Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can
happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and THEY
educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty
MILLION lots of the other kind-the kind that don't happen the same way
twice-and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than the
small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought to
been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, because
the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner
said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt
sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person
that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that
was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or
doubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was down on them people
that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that happens,
no matter whether-"
But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a
person always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the
other person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of
course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a
person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come
to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to
blame.
Jim begun to snore-soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a
stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water
sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to
it, and some big 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 wake up a man that is in the next block with a
dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that
awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that is
the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to
light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I
knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to
find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the
animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was
going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to
the noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed
by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the
first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind it
woke him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and there
ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
Jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could
listen better.
Tom said nobody warn't accusing him.
That made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. And he
wanted to git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse
the cameldriver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in
something and wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the
camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and
he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with
him there, too. But Tom says:
"I ain't so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good
and unselfish, but I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor
dervish, did he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go
in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be
satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred
camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could."
"Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only
struck for fifty camels."
"Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."
"Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline."
"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a
man he was hunting for-a man that never believes in anybody's word or
anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. 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't no way to
git hold of them. THEY don't put the salve on-oh, no, that would be sin;
but they know how to fool YOU into putting it on, then it's you that
blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-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 New York,
and they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads
in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the
salve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with
their railroads. 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 the
treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere
hill itself 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 into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a
little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps
that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over
together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a' crowded
either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't
nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on it as
easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they
would keep till Jim could tan them.
WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full
moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a
string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It
was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it,
just to have company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler,
that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun
come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the
camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in
procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. It
was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. Some
of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we 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 dinner considerable, I bet
you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them
for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look
very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and
after that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and
close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked
thick and foggy, but fiery 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 rushing every which way like they was scared; and then
they all flopped down flat in the 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 coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and
then it come harder, 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!"
We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the 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 sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried-buried under ten foot of sand, we
reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered
them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:
"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see, the
others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with
them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the
girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering around
them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling real
friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there ain't no
surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel
with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the start, and
traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we traveled with them,
and the more we got used to their ways, the better and better we liked
them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had
come to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was
talking about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even
dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their plain names without any
handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course,
it wasn't their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander
Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and
these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and
simmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as
soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn't
Mister, nor Judge, 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 and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down
friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and
the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no
difference what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much homeliker to have their company. When they had a wedding that night,
and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest
of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in
and shook a foot up there.
But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still dawn.
We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that never made
no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there
warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on
him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to
part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so
long, anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them,
too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while
we was looking, and leave us 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 we was going to lose them again like that.
We couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time
coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was
all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the
shiny spearheads 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 else we could see them praying, because they don't
allow nothing to prevent that; 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 out their 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 in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn't
do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going to live
as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world;
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 it was.
When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and
had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed
there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it
more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so
steady before.
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.
Jim says:
"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?"
"Depends on the way we go."
"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I
reckon we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat
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?"
drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter
of a minute before. Why, in a little 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'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours-three hours-just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see the
quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know what
real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he
ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't stand
it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the 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
water just 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
slapped on a hundredmile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a
dream; but we couldn'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. I didn't see
nothing to be glad about. I says:
"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know
is, what's become of it?"
Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:
"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."
"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"
He looked me over and says:
"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"
"No, I don't. What is it?"
"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it. "
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 DID see it."
"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either-because it warn't there to see."
It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind
of pleading and distressed:
"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis.
You ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us-same way like
Anna Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah-I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you
en Huck dis minute."
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 seen it, en dat
PROVE it was dah."
"Proves it! How does it prove it?"
"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson
might be 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's SO. 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 thousand
million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the
other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?"
"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body
'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now-a sailin' thoo
de sky, like she allays done."
Tom turned on me, then, and says:
"What do YOU say-is the sun standing still?"
"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody
that ain't blind can see it don't stand still."
"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of
low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss 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 lake agi'n!"
yelled Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?"
Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert,
perfectly plain, 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 hear you. It's so hot, en
you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don't
she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we gits dah,
I's SO thirsty."
"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 I wanted to."
We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it-and all of a sudden it was gone
again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he says,
gasping like a fish:
"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch 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's in."
"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I-gimme the glass!"
He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.
"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business-maybe they're going for food or water, 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 after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them,
and when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:
"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."
Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:
"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to
die, 'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."
He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because
I knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so
then I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off
and go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of these
days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it for a
while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that knows about
ghosts 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 by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:
"NOW get 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
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable-enough to make a body cry, it was so beautiful.
Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a lot,
and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that ever
begun with that water.
Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain'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 the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off-he always done it whenever
he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the ladder up
from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he turned on a
raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in the sky before
he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he was doing. Then
he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next; so there we was,
so high that 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, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, 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 to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over
the center, and sung out:
"Leggo, and drop!"
I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:
"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."
I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' come
along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got tuckered
out and fell.
And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to
hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of
them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting
and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was
which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was
dead. and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around
on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others
looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and
have some fun, but which we didn't want any.
As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them
was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there
was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk
and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big
enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came
across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and
things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and Jim was
a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or
two down for us that would answer.
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 way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you
fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular
and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down into
the lion market and see how we could make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the
reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and
hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We
had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took
a hand in the proceedings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the
rest overboard. Then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the
fresh meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that.
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
featherduster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree
the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one,
but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like
oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they
answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of
course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. 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 being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove the
bird away, it didn'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 out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them with
your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was there by
the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't that an eye
for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions
couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he couldn't
imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was
him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon
hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle
nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you
to no decision. 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 was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and
all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a
picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever
see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't
stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three
times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having a
front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before, and
so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't ever
have such a chance again.
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all
day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see
that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for
dinner. We was going 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,
we looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a
speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a
friend that 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, I speck."
"Why?"
"Well, hit stan' to reason we is. You knows how long we's been
a-skimmin' over it. Mus' be mos' out o' san'. Hit's a wonder to me dat
it's hilt out as long as it has."
"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't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, He ain't gwyne to
WAS'E it jist 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' 'dout
was'in' san'."
"Oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly STARTED across this
Desert yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain't it? Ain't it,
Huck?"
"Yes," I says, "there ain't no bigger one, I don't reckon."
"Well," he says, "this Desert is about the shape of the United States,
and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would cover
the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There'd be a little
corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Florida
sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. We've took California
away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the Pacific
coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her edge on
the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past New York
six 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. From one end of
the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains
3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert's
bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in under
where the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland, Ireland,
France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the home of the
brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the Great Sahara,
and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left."
"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord
took as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and all
them other countries."
Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis-you look at it, and see
ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey ain't
no way to make it 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't it?"
"Yes."
"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat."
"Well-no, He don't."
"Den how come He make a desert?"
"Well, go on. How DID He 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 it into a ole vacant back lot? 'Course.
Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat-dat de Great Sahara warn't
made at all, she jes HAPPEN'."
I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one
Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments
is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don't prove
nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are
tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there
ain't no way TO find out. And he says:
"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one of
Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it come
that there was just exactly enough starstuff, and none left 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's
only MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I
stand to it now-it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed Tom
Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person
that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for
people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse
with 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 of
the subject.
So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler
and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among
the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the
Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on
the map, and the room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to
think of, and I says:
"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
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 sense they'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 in China's vest-pocket; and not only
that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next time
you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and everywhere,
and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode Island is, and
hasn't got half as much in 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 a look, 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 and showed him all the treasures."
So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.
TOM said it happened like this.
A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one
blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and
hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run
across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms.
But the cameldriver he 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 is rich-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,
and they are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich
shall help His poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my
need, and He will remember this, and you will lose by it."
That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born
hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to whine
and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a full
freight down to 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 dervish starts along again, and says:
"All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you've made a
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 begged him 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
of the earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good
kind heart and 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 the treasures and get them out."
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 said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't
ever described so exact before.
"Well, then," says the dervish, "all right. If we load the hundred
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
rubbed the 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 like all the stars in heaven had fell down.
So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till
he couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them
started off with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come
a-running and overtook the dervish and says:
"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've
got. Won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?"
"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what you say is reasonable
enough."
So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again
with his forty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after
him again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him,
saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish
through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house,
but board around and give their note.
But that warn't the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and coming
till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he
was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the
dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him before,
and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and started off
again.
But do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was
unsatisfied again-he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties-and he
come arunning again. And this time the thing he wanted was 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 mighty well. You know, I reckon, that if I
had the salve on the other eye I could see a 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 mind telling 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 to put it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure
enough he was as blind as a bat in a minute.
Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him;
and says:
"Good-bye-a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry."
And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander
around poor 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 body gets.
They ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way
again-and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled
his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind
of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no
more, and he hadn't no more backs to break."
"All de same, Mars Tom, dey IS sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence.
De Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire."
"Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can
happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and THEY
educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty
MILLION lots of the other kind-the kind that don't happen the same way
twice-and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than the
small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought to
been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward, because
the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner
said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt
sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person
that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that
was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or
doubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was down on them people
that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that happens,
no matter whether-"
But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a
person always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the
other person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of
course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a
person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come
to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to
blame.
Jim begun to snore-soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a
stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water
sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to
it, and some big 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 wake up a man that is in the next block with a
dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that
awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that is
the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to
light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I
knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to
find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the
animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was
going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to
the noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed
by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the
first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind it
woke him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and there
ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
Jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could
listen better.
Tom said nobody warn't accusing him.
That made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. And he
wanted to git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse
the cameldriver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in
something and wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the
camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and
he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with
him there, too. But Tom says:
"I ain't so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good
and unselfish, but I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor
dervish, did he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go
in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be
satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred
camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could."
"Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only
struck for fifty camels."
"Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."
"Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline."
"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a
man he was hunting for-a man that never believes in anybody's word or
anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. 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't no way to
git hold of them. THEY don't put the salve on-oh, no, that would be sin;
but they know how to fool YOU into putting it on, then it's you that
blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-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 New York,
and they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads
in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the
salve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with
their railroads. 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 the
treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere
hill itself 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 into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a
little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps
that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over
together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a' crowded
either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't
nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on it as
easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they
would keep till Jim could tan them.
WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full
moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a
string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It
was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it,
just to have company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler,
that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun
come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the
camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in
procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. It
was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. Some
of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we 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 dinner considerable, I bet
you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them
for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look
very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and
after that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and
close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked
thick and foggy, but fiery 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 rushing every which way like they was scared; and then
they all flopped down flat in the 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 coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and
then it come harder, 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!"
We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the 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 sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried-buried under ten foot of sand, we
reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered
them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:
"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see, the
others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with
them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the
girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering around
them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling real
friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there ain't no
surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel
with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the start, and
traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we traveled with them,
and the more we got used to their ways, the better and better we liked
them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had
come to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was
talking about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even
dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their plain names without any
handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course,
it wasn't their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander
Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and
these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and
simmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as
soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn't
Mister, nor Judge, 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 and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down
friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and
the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no
difference what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much homeliker to have their company. When they had a wedding that night,
and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest
of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in
and shook a foot up there.
But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still dawn.
We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that never made
no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there
warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on
him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to
part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so
long, anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them,
too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while
we was looking, and leave us 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 we was going to lose them again like that.
We couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time
coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was
all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the
shiny spearheads 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 else we could see them praying, because they don't
allow nothing to prevent that; 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 out their 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 in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn't
do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going to live
as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world;
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 it was.
When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and
had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed
there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it
more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so
steady before.
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.
Jim says:
"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?"
"Depends on the way we go."
"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I
reckon we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat
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?"