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their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished
away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be
fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.
"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody
said.
"I couldn't help it-I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell to
sobbing again.
Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe
had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could not
take their fascinated eyes from his face.
They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.
Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a
wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that
the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy circumstance
would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were disappointed,
for more than one villager remarked:
"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it."
Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:
"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time."
Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.
"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your
mind, Tom?"
"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.
"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over. And
you said, 'Don't torment me so-I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it you'll
tell?"
Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might have
happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face and
she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:
"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it."
Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed
satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and
after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his jaws
every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently
slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good
while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place
again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew
irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of
Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.
It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind.
Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though
it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises; he noticed,
too, that Tom never acted as a witness-and that was strange; and Sid did
not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked aversion to these
inquests, and always avoided them when he could. Sid marvelled, but said
nothing. However, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and ceased to
torture Tom's conscience.
Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The jail
was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the
village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was seldom
occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's conscience.
The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and ride
him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character
that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter,
so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of his
inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery
that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in
the courts at present.
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the
wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should
die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an interest
in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing
but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy
in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manner of
remedies on him. She was one of those people who are infatuated with
patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or
mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When
something fresh in this line came out she was in a fever, right away, to
try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that
came handy. She was a subscriber for all the "Health" periodicals and
phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was
breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they contained about ventilation,
and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to
drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's
self in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she
never observed that her health-journals of the current month cusTomarily
upset everything they had recommended the month before. She was as
simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy
victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack
medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse,
metaphorically speaking, with "hell following after." But she never
suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in
disguise, to the suffering neighbors.
The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a
windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up
in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she
scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then
she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she
sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came through his
pores"-as Tom said.
Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and
pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and
plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the
water with a slim oatmeal diet and blisterplasters. She calculated his
capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack
cure-alls.
Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be
broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time.
She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It
was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and
everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She gave Tom a
teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her
troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the
"indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder,
heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too
little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought
over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to
be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a
nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit
bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to
alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle
clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did
not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the
sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for
a taste. Tom said:
"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."
But Peter signified that he did want it.
"You better make sure."
Peter was sure.
"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self."
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the
Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered
a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against
furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose
on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his
head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable
happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and
destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few
double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the
open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady
stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on
the floor expiring with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?"
"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having
a good time."
"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.
"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do."
"You DO?"
"Yes'm."
The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale
teaspoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual
handle-his ear-and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him-because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt!-you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!"
Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in
a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, too. She
began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she put
her hand on Tom's head and said gently:
"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good."
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter.
It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since-"
"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you try
and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any
more medicine."
Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange
thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late, he
hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to be
looking everywhere but whither he really was looking-down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed a
moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom accosted
him; and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about Becky, but the
giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and watched, hoping
whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the owner of it as
soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks ceased to appear,
and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered the empty schoolhouse
and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed in at the gate, and
Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he was out, and "going
on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the
fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings, standing on his
head-doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a
furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing. But
she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never looked. Could it be
possible that she was not aware that he was there? He carried his exploits
to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap,
hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys,
tumbling them in every direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under
Becky's nose, almost upsetting her-and she turned, with her nose in the
air, and he heard her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty
smart-always showing off!"
Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed
and crestfallen.
Tom's mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out
what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried to
do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do
them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame HIM for the
consequences-why shouldn't they? What right had the friendless to
complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of
crime. There was no choice.
By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he should
never, never hear that old familiar sound any more-it was very hard, but
it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold world, he must
submit-but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick and fast.
Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe
Harper-hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his
heart. Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom,
wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a
resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping
that Joe would not forget him.
But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been going
to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His mother
had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and knew
nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished him to
go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but succumb; he
hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her poor boy out
into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.
As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to
stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved
them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for
being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some
time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to Tom, he conceded
that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so
he consented to be a pirate.
Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi
River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded
island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a
rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry Finn,
and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was
indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the
river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour-which was
midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to capture.
Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal in
the most dark and mysterious way-as became outlaws. And before the
afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of
spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear something." All
who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and wait."
About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, and
stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay like
an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the quiet.
Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under the
bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the same
way. Then a guarded voice said:
"Who goes there?"
"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names."
"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.
"'Tis well. Give the countersign."
Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the
brooding night:
"BLOOD!"
Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was an
easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked the
advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.
The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought a
few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it would
never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought; matches were
hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire smouldering upon a great
raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped
themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing adventure of it, saying,
"Hist!" every now and then, and suddenly halting with finger on lip;
moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal
whispers that if "the foe" stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt,"
because "dead men tell no tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen
were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still
that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.
They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:
"Luff, and bring her to the wind!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Steady, steady-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
"Let her go off a point!"
"Point it is, sir!"
As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for "style,"
and were not intended to mean anything in particular.
"What sail's she carrying?"
"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir."
"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of
ye-foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Hellum-a-lee-hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head
right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so there was
not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was said during
the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the
distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay,
peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water,
unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. The Black Avenger
stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon the scene of his
former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing "she" could see him now,
abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going
to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on
his imagination to remove Jackson's Island beyond eyeshot of the village,
and so he "looked his last" with a broken and satisfied heart. The other
pirates were looking their last, too; and they all looked so long that
they came near letting the current drift them out of the range of the
island. But they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert
it. About two o'clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two
hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth
until they had landed their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings
consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes
for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in
the open air in good weather, as became outlaws.
They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon
in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock
they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild,
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far
from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy
glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and festooning vines.
When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of
corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled
with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they would not
deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting camp-fire.
"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe.
"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?"
"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here-hey, Hucky!"
"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally-and here
they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so."
"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that blame
foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe, when he's
ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and then he don't
have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way."
"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it, you
know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it."
"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a hermit's
got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and ashes
on his head, and stand out in the rain, and-"
"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck.
"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit."
"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.
"Well, what would you do?"
"I dono. But I wouldn't do that."
"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?"
"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away."
"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be a
disgrace."
The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had finished
gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with
tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of
fragrant smoke-he was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. The
other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to
acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:
"What does pirates have to do?"
Tom said:
"Oh, they have just a bully time-take ships and burn them, and get the
money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts and
things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships-make 'em walk a
plank."
"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe; "they don't kill
the women."
"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women-they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.
"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm.
"Who?" said Huck.
"Why, the pirates."
Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.
"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these."
But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was cusTomary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had more
difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly, and
lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them kneel
and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at all, but
they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they might call
down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at once they
reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep-but an intruder came,
now, that would not "down." It was conscience. They began to feel a vague
fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of
the stolen meat, and then the real torture came. They tried to argue it
away by reminding conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples
scores of times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin
plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no getting
around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while
taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing-and
there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved
that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not
again be sullied with the crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a
truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.
When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep
pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound
obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood upon the
leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin
blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck still slept.
Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of
the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to
work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came crawling
over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time to
time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again-for he was measuring,
Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat as
still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the
creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and
when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the
air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey over
him, his whole heart was glad-for that meant that he was going to have a
new suit of clothes-without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical
uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in particular,
and went about their labors; one struggled manfully by with a dead spider
five times as big as itself in its arms, and lugged it straight up a
tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass
blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said:
"Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home,
your house is on fire, your children's alone,"
and she took wing and went off to see about it-which did not surprise
the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about
conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once. A
tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and Tom touched the
creature, to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead.
The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A catbird, the Northern
mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of
her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a
flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach,
cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming
curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came
skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at the
boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and
scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and
stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense
foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the
scene.
Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a
shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and tumbling
over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white sandbar. They
felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the distance beyond the
majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a slight rise in the river
had carried off their raft, but this only gratified them, since its going
was something like burning the bridge between them and civilization.
They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found a
spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak
or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wildwood
charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. While Joe was
slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a minute;
they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank and threw in their
lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to get
impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of
sun-perch and a small catfish-provisions enough for quite a family. They
fried the fish with the bacon, and were astonished; for no fish had ever
seemed so delicious before. They did not know that the quicker a
fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is; and
they reflected little upon what a sauce open-air sleeping, open-air
exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger make, too.
They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, among
solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the ground with a
drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came upon snug nooks
carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.
They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles long
and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to was
only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards wide.
They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle of the
afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too hungry to stop to
fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw themselves
down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon began to drag, and then died.
The stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods, and the sense of
loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys. They fell to
thinking. A sort of undefined longing crept upon them. This took dim
shape, presently-it was budding homesickness. Even Finn the Red-Handed was
dreaming of his doorsteps and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed
of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak his thought.
For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a clock
which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound became
more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, glanced at
each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There was a long
silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating
down out of the distance.
"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath.
"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper.
"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder-"
"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen-don't talk."
They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.
"Let's go and see."
They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town.
They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The
little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting with
the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were a great
many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood
of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what the men in them
were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the
ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same
dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.
"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's drownded!"
"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him come
up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver in
'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody that's drownded,
they'll float right there and stop."
"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread
do that."
"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I reckon it's mostly what
they SAY over it before they start it out."
"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and
they don't."
"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves.
Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that."
The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be
expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.
"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe.
"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is."
The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:
"Boys, I know who's drownded-it's us!"
They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor lost
lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town,
and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was
concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after all.
As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accusTomed business
and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They were
jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble
they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then
fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them;
and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were
gratifying to look upon-from their point of view. But when the shadows of
night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into
the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. The excitement
was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could not keep back thoughts of certain
persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they
were. Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two
escaped, unawares. By and by Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout
"feeler" as to how the others might look upon a return to civilization-not
right now, but-
Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get out
of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to rest
for the moment.
As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe
followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, watching
the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees, and went
searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung by the
camp-fire. He picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders of the
thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed to suit
him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something upon each of
these with his "red keel"; one he rolled up and put in his jacket pocket,
and the other he put in Joe's hat and removed it to a little distance from
the owner. And he also put into the hat certain schoolboy treasures of
almost inestimable value-among them a lump of chalk, an India-rubber ball,
three fishhooks, and one of that kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough
crystal." Then he tiptoed his way cautiously among the trees till he felt
that he was out of hearing, and straightway broke into a keen run in the
direction of the sandbar.
A few minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading
toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was
half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck
out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering
upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had expected.
However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till he found a
low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket pocket,
found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods, following
the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before ten o'clock he came out
into an open place opposite the village, and saw the ferryboat lying in
the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Everything was quiet under the
blinking stars. He crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes,
slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the
skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern. He laid himself down under
the thwarts and waited, panting.
Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast
off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, against
the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in his success,
for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At the end of a
long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom slipped
overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards downstream, out
of danger of possible stragglers.
He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in at
the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There sat Aunt
Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together, talking. They
were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the door. Tom went to
the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he pressed gently and
the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing cautiously, and quaking
every time it creaked, till he judged he might squeeze through on his
knees; so he put his head through and began, warily.
"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. "Why,
that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of strange
things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid."
Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed"
himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.
"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say-only
mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't any
more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and he was the
best-hearted boy that ever was"-and she began to cry.
"It was just so with my Joe-always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he could
be-and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking that
cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself because it was
sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, never, never,
poor abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart would break.
"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been
better in some ways-"
"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take care
of HIM-never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't know how
to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a comfort to
me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most."
"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away-Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard-Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe
busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling.
Little did I know then, how soon-Oh, if it was to do over again I'd hug
him and bless him for it."
"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took and
filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would tear
the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head with my thimble,
poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his troubles now. And the
last words I ever heard him say was to reproach-"
But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself-and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for
him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself than
ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief to
long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy-and the
theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too,
but he resisted and lay still.
He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing
lads had promised that the village should "hear something" soon; the
away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be
fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.
"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody
said.
"I couldn't help it-I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell to
sobbing again.
Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe
had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could not
take their fascinated eyes from his face.
They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.
Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a
wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that
the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy circumstance
would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were disappointed,
for more than one villager remarked:
"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it."
Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:
"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time."
Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.
"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your
mind, Tom?"
"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.
"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over. And
you said, 'Don't torment me so-I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it you'll
tell?"
Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might have
happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's face and
she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:
"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it."
Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed
satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, and
after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his jaws
every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently
slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good
while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place
again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and the toothache grew
irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to make anything out of
Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.
It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his mind.
Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, though
it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises; he noticed,
too, that Tom never acted as a witness-and that was strange; and Sid did
not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a marked aversion to these
inquests, and always avoided them when he could. Sid marvelled, but said
nothing. However, even inquests went out of vogue at last, and ceased to
torture Tom's conscience.
Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The jail
was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the
village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was seldom
occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's conscience.
The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and ride
him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his character
that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead in the matter,
so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of his
inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the grave-robbery
that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not to try the case in
the courts at present.
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the
wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should
die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an interest
in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing
but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy
in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manner of
remedies on him. She was one of those people who are infatuated with
patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or
mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When
something fresh in this line came out she was in a fever, right away, to
try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that
came handy. She was a subscriber for all the "Health" periodicals and
phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance they were inflated with was
breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they contained about ventilation,
and how to go to bed, and how to get up, and what to eat, and what to
drink, and how much exercise to take, and what frame of mind to keep one's
self in, and what sort of clothing to wear, was all gospel to her, and she
never observed that her health-journals of the current month cusTomarily
upset everything they had recommended the month before. She was as
simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy
victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack
medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse,
metaphorically speaking, with "hell following after." But she never
suspected that she was not an angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in
disguise, to the suffering neighbors.
The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a
windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up
in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she
scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then
she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she
sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came through his
pores"-as Tom said.
Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and
pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and
plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the
water with a slim oatmeal diet and blisterplasters. She calculated his
capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack
cure-alls.
Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be
broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time.
She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It
was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and
everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She gave Tom a
teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her
troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the
"indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder,
heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too
little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought
over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to
be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a
nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit
bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to
alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle
clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did
not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the
sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for
a taste. Tom said:
"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."
But Peter signified that he did want it.
"You better make sure."
Peter was sure.
"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self."
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the
Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered
a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against
furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose
on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his
head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable
happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and
destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few
double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the
open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady
stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on
the floor expiring with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?"
"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having
a good time."
"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.
"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do."
"You DO?"
"Yes'm."
The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale
teaspoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual
handle-his ear-and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him-because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt!-you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!"
Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing in
a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, too. She
began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, and she put
her hand on Tom's head and said gently:
"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good."
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter.
It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since-"
"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you try
and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take any
more medicine."
Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange
thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late, he
hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to be
looking everywhere but whither he really was looking-down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed a
moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom accosted
him; and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about Becky, but the
giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and watched, hoping
whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the owner of it as
soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks ceased to appear,
and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered the empty schoolhouse
and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock passed in at the gate, and
Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next instant he was out, and "going
on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing, chasing boys, jumping over the
fence at risk of life and limb, throwing handsprings, standing on his
head-doing all the heroic things he could conceive of, and keeping a
furtive eye out, all the while, to see if Becky Thatcher was noticing. But
she seemed to be unconscious of it all; she never looked. Could it be
possible that she was not aware that he was there? He carried his exploits
to her immediate vicinity; came war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap,
hurled it to the roof of the schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys,
tumbling them in every direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under
Becky's nose, almost upsetting her-and she turned, with her nose in the
air, and he heard her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty
smart-always showing off!"
Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed
and crestfallen.
Tom's mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found out
what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had tried to
do right and get along, but they would not let him; since nothing would do
them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them blame HIM for the
consequences-why shouldn't they? What right had the friendless to
complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of
crime. There was no choice.
By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he should
never, never hear that old familiar sound any more-it was very hard, but
it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold world, he must
submit-but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick and fast.
Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe
Harper-hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his
heart. Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom,
wiping his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a
resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by hoping
that Joe would not forget him.
But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been going
to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His mother
had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never tasted and knew
nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him and wished him to
go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him to do but succumb; he
hoped she would be happy, and never regret having driven her poor boy out
into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.
As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to
stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved
them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for
being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some
time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to Tom, he conceded
that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so
he consented to be a pirate.
Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi
River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded
island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as a
rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry Finn,
and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he was
indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on the
river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour-which was
midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to capture.
Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he could steal in
the most dark and mysterious way-as became outlaws. And before the
afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet glory of
spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear something." All
who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and wait."
About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, and
stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay like
an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the quiet.
Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under the
bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the same
way. Then a guarded voice said:
"Who goes there?"
"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names."
"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.
"'Tis well. Give the countersign."
Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to the
brooding night:
"BLOOD!"
Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was an
easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it lacked the
advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.
The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought a
few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it would
never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought; matches were
hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire smouldering upon a great
raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped
themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing adventure of it, saying,
"Hist!" every now and then, and suddenly halting with finger on lip;
moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal
whispers that if "the foe" stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt,"
because "dead men tell no tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen
were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still
that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.
They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:
"Luff, and bring her to the wind!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Steady, steady-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
"Let her go off a point!"
"Point it is, sir!"
As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for "style,"
and were not intended to mean anything in particular.
"What sail's she carrying?"
"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir."
"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of
ye-foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Hellum-a-lee-hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head
right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so there was
not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was said during
the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the
distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay,
peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water,
unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. The Black Avenger
stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon the scene of his
former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing "she" could see him now,
abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going
to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on
his imagination to remove Jackson's Island beyond eyeshot of the village,
and so he "looked his last" with a broken and satisfied heart. The other
pirates were looking their last, too; and they all looked so long that
they came near letting the current drift them out of the range of the
island. But they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert
it. About two o'clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two
hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth
until they had landed their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings
consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes
for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in
the open air in good weather, as became outlaws.
They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon
in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" stock
they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild,
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far
from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy
glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and festooning vines.
When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of
corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled
with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they would not
deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting camp-fire.
"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe.
"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?"
"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here-hey, Hucky!"
"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally-and here
they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so."
"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that blame
foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe, when he's
ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and then he don't
have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way."
"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it, you
know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it."
"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a hermit's
got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and ashes
on his head, and stand out in the rain, and-"
"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck.
"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit."
"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.
"Well, what would you do?"
"I dono. But I wouldn't do that."
"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?"
"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away."
"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be a
disgrace."
The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had finished
gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with
tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of
fragrant smoke-he was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. The
other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to
acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:
"What does pirates have to do?"
Tom said:
"Oh, they have just a bully time-take ships and burn them, and get the
money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts and
things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships-make 'em walk a
plank."
"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe; "they don't kill
the women."
"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women-they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.
"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm.
"Who?" said Huck.
"Why, the pirates."
Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.
"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these."
But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was cusTomary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had more
difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly, and
lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them kneel
and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at all, but
they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they might call
down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at once they
reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep-but an intruder came,
now, that would not "down." It was conscience. They began to feel a vague
fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of
the stolen meat, and then the real torture came. They tried to argue it
away by reminding conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples
scores of times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin
plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no getting
around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while
taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing-and
there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved
that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not
again be sullied with the crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a
truce, and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.
When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep
pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound
obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood upon the
leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin
blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck still slept.
Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of
the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to
work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came crawling
over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time to
time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again-for he was measuring,
Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat as
still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, by turns, as the
creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere; and
when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the
air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey over
him, his whole heart was glad-for that meant that he was going to have a
new suit of clothes-without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical
uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in particular,
and went about their labors; one struggled manfully by with a dead spider
five times as big as itself in its arms, and lugged it straight up a
tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass
blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said:
"Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home,
your house is on fire, your children's alone,"
and she took wing and went off to see about it-which did not surprise
the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about
conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once. A
tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and Tom touched the
creature, to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead.
The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A catbird, the Northern
mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of
her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a
flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach,
cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming
curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came
skurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at the
boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and
scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and
stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense
foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the
scene.
Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a
shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and tumbling
over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white sandbar. They
felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the distance beyond the
majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a slight rise in the river
had carried off their raft, but this only gratified them, since its going
was something like burning the bridge between them and civilization.
They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found a
spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad oak
or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a wildwood
charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. While Joe was
slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to hold on a minute;
they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank and threw in their
lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had not had time to get
impatient before they were back again with some handsome bass, a couple of
sun-perch and a small catfish-provisions enough for quite a family. They
fried the fish with the bacon, and were astonished; for no fish had ever
seemed so delicious before. They did not know that the quicker a
fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is caught the better he is; and
they reflected little upon what a sauce open-air sleeping, open-air
exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient of hunger make, too.
They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, among
solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the ground with a
drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came upon snug nooks
carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.
They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles long
and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to was
only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards wide.
They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the middle of the
afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too hungry to stop to
fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and then threw themselves
down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon began to drag, and then died.
The stillness, the solemnity that brooded in the woods, and the sense of
loneliness, began to tell upon the spirits of the boys. They fell to
thinking. A sort of undefined longing crept upon them. This took dim
shape, presently-it was budding homesickness. Even Finn the Red-Handed was
dreaming of his doorsteps and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed
of their weakness, and none was brave enough to speak his thought.
For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a clock
which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound became
more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, glanced at
each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There was a long
silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating
down out of the distance.
"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath.
"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper.
"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder-"
"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen-don't talk."
They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.
"Let's go and see."
They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town.
They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The
little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting with
the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were a great
many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the neighborhood
of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what the men in them
were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst from the
ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, that same
dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.
"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's drownded!"
"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him come
up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver in
'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody that's drownded,
they'll float right there and stop."
"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread
do that."
"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I reckon it's mostly what
they SAY over it before they start it out."
"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and
they don't."
"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves.
Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that."
The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be
expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.
"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe.
"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is."
The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:
"Boys, I know who's drownded-it's us!"
They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor lost
lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town,
and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety was
concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after all.
As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accusTomed business
and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They were
jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious trouble
they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, and then
fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying about them;
and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their account were
gratifying to look upon-from their point of view. But when the shadows of
night closed them in, they gradually ceased to talk, and sat gazing into
the fire, with their minds evidently wandering elsewhere. The excitement
was gone, now, and Tom and Joe could not keep back thoughts of certain
persons at home who were not enjoying this fine frolic as much as they
were. Misgivings came; they grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two
escaped, unawares. By and by Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout
"feeler" as to how the others might look upon a return to civilization-not
right now, but-
Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get out
of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to rest
for the moment.
As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe
followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, watching
the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees, and went
searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung by the
camp-fire. He picked up and inspected several large semi-cylinders of the
thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose two which seemed to suit
him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully wrote something upon each of
these with his "red keel"; one he rolled up and put in his jacket pocket,
and the other he put in Joe's hat and removed it to a little distance from
the owner. And he also put into the hat certain schoolboy treasures of
almost inestimable value-among them a lump of chalk, an India-rubber ball,
three fishhooks, and one of that kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough
crystal." Then he tiptoed his way cautiously among the trees till he felt
that he was out of hearing, and straightway broke into a keen run in the
direction of the sandbar.
A few minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading
toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was
half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he struck
out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam quartering
upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he had expected.
However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along till he found a
low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his jacket pocket,
found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through the woods, following
the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before ten o'clock he came out
into an open place opposite the village, and saw the ferryboat lying in
the shadow of the trees and the high bank. Everything was quiet under the
blinking stars. He crept down the bank, watching with all his eyes,
slipped into the water, swam three or four strokes and climbed into the
skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's stern. He laid himself down under
the thwarts and waited, panting.
Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast
off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, against
the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in his success,
for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At the end of a
long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom slipped
overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards downstream, out
of danger of possible stragglers.
He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in at
the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There sat Aunt
Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together, talking. They
were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the door. Tom went to
the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he pressed gently and
the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing cautiously, and quaking
every time it creaked, till he judged he might squeeze through on his
knees; so he put his head through and began, warily.
"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. "Why,
that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of strange
things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid."
Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed"
himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.
"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say-only
mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He warn't any
more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and he was the
best-hearted boy that ever was"-and she began to cry.
"It was just so with my Joe-always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he could
be-and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking that
cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself because it was
sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, never, never,
poor abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart would break.
"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been
better in some ways-"
"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take care
of HIM-never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't know how
to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a comfort to
me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most."
"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away-Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard-Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe
busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling.
Little did I know then, how soon-Oh, if it was to do over again I'd hug
him and bless him for it."
"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took and
filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would tear
the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head with my thimble,
poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his troubles now. And the
last words I ever heard him say was to reproach-"
But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself-and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word for
him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself than
ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's grief to
long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with joy-and the
theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to his nature, too,
but he resisted and lay still.
He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the missing
lads had promised that the village should "hear something" soon; the