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hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon, and then he'd
land in London.
We said we would be humbly thankful.
He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give
us a long look of his blackest kind-one of the maliciousest and
suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says:
"You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it."
We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of
his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try
to make us answer him, but we dasn't.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I
couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and
by Tom pinched me and whispers:
"Look!"
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a
bottle. I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink,
and pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and
stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to
mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it
was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we
couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn't still
ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise
again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash of
lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down.
We heard him scream out in the dark:
"They don't want to go to England. All right, I'll change the course.
They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall-and NOW!"
I 'most died when he said that. Then he was still again-still so long I
couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't EVER come
again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his
hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was
terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, "Overboard YOU go!" but it
was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or
not, and Tom didn't make a sound.
There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I
see Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the
rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor
let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark
again, and Jim groaned out, "Po' Mars Tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump
for the professor, but the professor warn't there.
Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so
loud, and then another that was 'way below, and you could only JUST hear
it; and I heard Jim say, "Po' Mars Tom!"
Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 'a' counted four
thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees,
with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was
crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I was
glad, because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come, I was
watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the
ladder, and it was Tom!
"Come up!" I shouts; "come up, Tom!"
His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn't make out what
he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:
"No, he's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?"
Of course, all this in the dark.
"Huck, who is you hollerin' at?"
"I'm hollerin' at Tom."
"Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' Mars Tom-" Then he let
off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off
another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised
up his face just in time to see Tom's, as white as snow, rise above the
gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom's ghost, you
see.
Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it WAS him, and not his ghost, he
hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like
he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:
"What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first?"
"I dasn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't
know who it was in the dark. It could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been
Jim."
That was the way with Tom Sawyer-always sound. He warn't coming up till
he knowed where the professor was.
The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was
dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared
out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come
down. One second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you
could count the threads in your coatsleeve, and see a whole wide desert of
waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like
that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you
are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just
been a death in the family.
We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor
professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made
fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could,
and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding
his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes and blankets
and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther take the rain
than go meddling back there.
WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me
and Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that
by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far
toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship,
and have the glory of saying we done it.
About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the
ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on
the lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The
sea was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon
our things was all dry again.
We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was
that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood.
Then Tom was disturbed. He says:
"You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got
to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or
she'll wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to."
"Well," I says, "what's she been doing since-er-since we had the
accident?"
"Wandering," he says, kinder troubled-" wandering, without any doubt.
She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how
long that's been going on, either."
So then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we
rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body
could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for
the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and a
charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches;
and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and maps, and
charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of rubbish,
like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that he
had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too. Yes, the
professor was well enough fixed.
After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all
up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out
I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and wrote
a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened
to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and folded it
together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote
above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE ERRONORT," and
said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in
the mail. I says:
"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."
"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"
"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."
"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."
"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"
I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his
mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:
"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a
mighty good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe
there's ANY that does."
"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?-that's the p'int. "
"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses
for-for-well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a
person warm, do they?"
"Course they don't."
"But they put them ON, don't they?"
"Yes."
"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the
ruffle on it."
I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.
"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's
sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it,
nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey
wouldn't stay ef you did."
"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know
something about."
"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts,
when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence-"
"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only-"
"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter-"
"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a
metaphor."
That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says-rather
timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:
"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"
"A metaphor's a-well, it's a-a-a metaphor's an illustration." He see
THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather
flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying-"
"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no
feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits
till you catches dem birds together, you'll-"
"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through
your thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."
Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for
catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he was
a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together.
You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way
to find out about birds. That's the way people does that writes books
about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take
any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is
ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself, because I
always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to learn how to be
one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its
head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I fired, and his
song stopped and he fell straight down from the limb, all limp like a rag,
and I run and picked him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my
hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like his neck was
broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes, and one little
drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I couldn't see nothing
more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no creature since that
warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to.
But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the
subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when
a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people
made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them ever
told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well,
that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That pleased
Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:
"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't
know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make
it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."
He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and
said it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be
Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if
we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a
traveler now.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and
we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the
glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing
but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still there
warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it
would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a
higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in the dark.
It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed
up, because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land,
and didn't stand no regular watch.
Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked
over, and there was the land sure enough-land all around, as far as you
could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd
been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and
Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead
ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and
rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way.
We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and
hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor
any other settlement-nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was
clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought England
looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have
breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We
cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along
down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. But
it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most too
moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!
We settled down to within thirty foot of the land-that is, it was land
if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb
down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing
good-that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hot
embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we
heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making
signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared
anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close
enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick:
"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass! Run,
boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de menagerie,
en dey ain't nobody to stop him!"
It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could
only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost
gaining on you.
Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and
as soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim
had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along
up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most
ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to take
one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under
me.
But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a
little, and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or
twelve feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under
me, and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only
missing it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious
to be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and
thankful all up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't
climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the
other. It is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is
not to be recommended, either.
Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I
could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion
behind. I said I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if
he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, "Take a
good grip," and he started.
"Don't go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my head swim."
He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided
over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it IS
uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and
not a sound.
But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching
up. His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from
every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under
me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and
so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they
could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts
come, without an invite, and they started a regular riot down there. We
see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever git away from them at this
gait, and I couldn't hold on forever. So Tom took a think, and struck
another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box revolver, and
then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the carcass. So he
stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the
fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, and they helped
me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on
hand once more. And when they see we was really gone and they couldn't get
us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so kind of
disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see THEIR
side of the matter.
I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so
I made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a
body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give
the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.
We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it
was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight
again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and
says:
"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great
Sahara, as sure as guns!"
He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:
"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?"
"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."
Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of
interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't
more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far
away for us to have traveled.
But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions
and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found out,
before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he
had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:
"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea
voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping
St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the
afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this
Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven
o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down,
and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 11
A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and set by my
watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we've
come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by
the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out-more than four hours and a half
out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of
Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted right-which we
wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering-wandering 'way down south of east,
and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map. You see how the
shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how fast we've traveled;
if we had gone straight east we would be long past England by this time.
You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast
a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is coming mighty close to
marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa; and it's just bully."
Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:
"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's. hain't seen no niggers
yit."
"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off
yonder? Gimme a glass."
He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched
across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.
"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and-"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"
"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly
well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself."
"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on
the GROUND."
"Tom, do you know that to be so?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."
He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if
Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and
sing out:
"Camels!-Camels!"
So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:
"Camels your granny; they're spiders."
"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the
air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? Spiders,
good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go down and milk
one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a caravan, that's what
it is, and it's a mile long."
"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."
"All right," he says, and give the command:
"Lower away."
As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a
thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels
and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weatherJ-well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of a
sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.
The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their
stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and
scampered every which way, and so did the camels.
We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to get
together and form the procession again; then they started along, but we
could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other
side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound
that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the
caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got nearer, he sneaked
down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses-for that is
what they was-and we see them mount in a hurry; and next, here they come,
like a house afire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of
them yelling the best they could.
They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a' been
six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they
broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and
scampering around, and laying into each other like everything; and
whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people
and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in
every direction.
At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went staggering
off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, for we was
three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.
We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed
down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and
thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half a
mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which
was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the
caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned
they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the
wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We swooped down and
stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was
a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it
was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse; and then we
started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near by, and
Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her the
child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and
fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and snatched it and
hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and then snatched off a gold
chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up
the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and Jim he shoved
for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky and
the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders
and the child with its arms locked around her neck. And there she stood,
as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in the sky.
"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of
us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the weather
and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north,
too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds-a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the
world that could do that-except one, and that was a flea.
"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly
speakin'-"
"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"
"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.
No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He
mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."
"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"
"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don't."
"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"
"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em-anybody knows dat."
"Can't a man walk miles?"
"Yassir, he kin."
"As many as a railroad?"
"Yassir, if you give him time."
"Can't a flea?"
"Well-I s'pose so-ef you gives him heaps of time."
"Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to
judge by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that
COUNTS, ain't it?"
"Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom."
"It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come to
gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and your
railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than about
ten miles in an hour-not much over ten thousand times his own length. But
all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred
and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second
too-seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second-for
he don't fool away any time stopping and starting-he does them both at the
same time; you'll see, if you try to put your finger on him. Now that's a
common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; but you take an Eyetalian
FIRST-class, that's been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn't
ever knowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more
than three hundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such
jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. Well,
suppose a man could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a
second-say, a mile and a half. It's ninety miles a minute; it's
considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. Where's your man
NOW?-yes, and your bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they
don't amount to shucks 'longside of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled
down small."
Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:
"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"
"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."
"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no
respec' for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do
deserve it, dat's certain."
"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to do
all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing and
a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, in the
same proportion-where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That flea would
be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more prevent it
than you can prevent lightning."
"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No,
sir, I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."
"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other
cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of
them all. People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an
elephant's, and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He
can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can
come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and
is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment,
or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so. There's
folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of them.
I've never had one of them on me in my life."
"Mars Tom!"
"It's so; I ain't joking."
"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but there
it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always been
just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them as
not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.
We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for the
last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that solemn,
peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in
us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling,
and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So we had
cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most noble good
lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes stretched out
on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.
It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to
find land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that-clean over
it. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't
want to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed
as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making me
do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want to
do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something else,
and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up here in
the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and
plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and no
pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the
world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and it's
such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.
We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever
see. The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we
see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink.
That's the kind of moonlight to have.
Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:
"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"
And the man says:
"Was he blind in his left eye?"
"Yes."
"Had he lost an upper front tooth?"
"Yes."
"Was his off hind leg lame?"
"Yes."
"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"
"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details-that's the one, and I'm
in a hurry. Where did you see him?"
"I hain't seen him at all," the man says.
"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"
"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a
camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in
his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,
and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because he
only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had
lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his
teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side-the ants
told me that; the honey leaked out on the other-the flies told me that. I
know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."
Jim says:
"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."
"That's all," Tom says.
"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"
"I don't know."
"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"
"No."
Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:
"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no
IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"
"No, I haven't."
I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and
the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's
fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he
whirls on me and says:
"What do YOU think of the tale?"
Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it
did seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale
stopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't
worth the trouble of telling.
Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I
reckoned he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be
only sad; and he says:
"Some people can see, and some can't-just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the
track."
I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one
of his irrulevances, I reckon-he was full of them, sometimes, when he was
in a close place and couldn't see no other way out-but I didn't mind. We'd
spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git away
from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I reckon,
much as he tried not to let on.
WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the
desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't
high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the
desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting
toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.
We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and
now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring,
and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost right
under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about, perfectly
quiet, like they was asleep.
We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we
see that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us
hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down
slow and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was
men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and
shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. And
yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like
they was asleep.
Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most
of them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard.
Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it
tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying there
for years.
Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had
shawl belts with long, silvermounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels
had their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to the
dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We took a
small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we
wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could
think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away
again, of course.
Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot
on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and
about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; but
Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and so
that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn't
think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.
Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made
out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We wondered if
we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but Tom thought
it over and said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they
would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the
temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished we had took all they
had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all left.
We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was
dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water,
but it was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to
scald your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water,
the best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that
would help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we
hadn't been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the
land in London.
We said we would be humbly thankful.
He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give
us a long look of his blackest kind-one of the maliciousest and
suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says:
"You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it."
We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of
his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try
to make us answer him, but we dasn't.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I
couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and
by Tom pinched me and whispers:
"Look!"
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a
bottle. I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink,
and pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and
stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to
mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it
was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we
couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn't still
ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise
again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash of
lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down.
We heard him scream out in the dark:
"They don't want to go to England. All right, I'll change the course.
They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall-and NOW!"
I 'most died when he said that. Then he was still again-still so long I
couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't EVER come
again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his
hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was
terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, "Overboard YOU go!" but it
was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or
not, and Tom didn't make a sound.
There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I
see Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the
rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor
let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark
again, and Jim groaned out, "Po' Mars Tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump
for the professor, but the professor warn't there.
Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so
loud, and then another that was 'way below, and you could only JUST hear
it; and I heard Jim say, "Po' Mars Tom!"
Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 'a' counted four
thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees,
with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was
crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I was
glad, because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come, I was
watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the
ladder, and it was Tom!
"Come up!" I shouts; "come up, Tom!"
His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn't make out what
he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:
"No, he's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?"
Of course, all this in the dark.
"Huck, who is you hollerin' at?"
"I'm hollerin' at Tom."
"Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' Mars Tom-" Then he let
off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off
another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised
up his face just in time to see Tom's, as white as snow, rise above the
gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom's ghost, you
see.
Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it WAS him, and not his ghost, he
hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like
he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:
"What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first?"
"I dasn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't
know who it was in the dark. It could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been
Jim."
That was the way with Tom Sawyer-always sound. He warn't coming up till
he knowed where the professor was.
The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was
dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared
out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come
down. One second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you
could count the threads in your coatsleeve, and see a whole wide desert of
waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like
that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you
are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just
been a death in the family.
We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor
professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made
fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could,
and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding
his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes and blankets
and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther take the rain
than go meddling back there.
WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me
and Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that
by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far
toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship,
and have the glory of saying we done it.
About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the
ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on
the lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The
sea was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon
our things was all dry again.
We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was
that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood.
Then Tom was disturbed. He says:
"You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got
to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or
she'll wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to."
"Well," I says, "what's she been doing since-er-since we had the
accident?"
"Wandering," he says, kinder troubled-" wandering, without any doubt.
She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how
long that's been going on, either."
So then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we
rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body
could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for
the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and a
charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches;
and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and maps, and
charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of rubbish,
like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that he
had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too. Yes, the
professor was well enough fixed.
After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all
up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out
I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and wrote
a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened
to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and folded it
together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote
above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE ERRONORT," and
said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in
the mail. I says:
"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."
"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"
"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."
"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."
"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"
I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his
mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:
"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a
mighty good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe
there's ANY that does."
"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?-that's the p'int. "
"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses
for-for-well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a
person warm, do they?"
"Course they don't."
"But they put them ON, don't they?"
"Yes."
"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the
ruffle on it."
I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.
"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's
sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it,
nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey
wouldn't stay ef you did."
"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know
something about."
"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts,
when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence-"
"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only-"
"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter-"
"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a
metaphor."
That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says-rather
timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:
"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"
"A metaphor's a-well, it's a-a-a metaphor's an illustration." He see
THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather
flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying-"
"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no
feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits
till you catches dem birds together, you'll-"
"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through
your thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."
Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for
catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he was
a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together.
You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way
to find out about birds. That's the way people does that writes books
about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take
any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is
ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself, because I
always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to learn how to be
one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its
head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I fired, and his
song stopped and he fell straight down from the limb, all limp like a rag,
and I run and picked him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my
hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like his neck was
broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes, and one little
drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I couldn't see nothing
more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no creature since that
warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to.
But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the
subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when
a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people
made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them ever
told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well,
that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That pleased
Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:
"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't
know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make
it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."
He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and
said it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be
Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if
we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a
traveler now.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and
we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the
glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing
but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still there
warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but reckoned it
would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but went up on a
higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in the dark.
It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed
up, because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land,
and didn't stand no regular watch.
Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked
over, and there was the land sure enough-land all around, as far as you
could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd
been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and
Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead
ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and
rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way.
We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and
hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor
any other settlement-nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was
clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought England
looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have
breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We
cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along
down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs. But
it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most too
moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!
We settled down to within thirty foot of the land-that is, it was land
if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb
down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing
good-that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like hot
embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we
heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making
signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared
anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close
enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick:
"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass! Run,
boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de menagerie,
en dey ain't nobody to stop him!"
It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could
only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost
gaining on you.
Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and
as soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim
had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along
up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most
ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to take
one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under
me.
But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a
little, and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or
twelve feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under
me, and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only
missing it about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious
to be out of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and
thankful all up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't
climb, and that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the
other. It is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is
not to be recommended, either.
Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I
could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion
behind. I said I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if
he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, "Take a
good grip," and he started.
"Don't go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my head swim."
He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided
over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it IS
uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and
not a sound.
But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching
up. His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from
every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them under
me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each other; and
so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they
could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then some other beasts
come, without an invite, and they started a regular riot down there. We
see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever git away from them at this
gait, and I couldn't hold on forever. So Tom took a think, and struck
another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box revolver, and
then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the carcass. So he
stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the
fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off, and they helped
me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again, that gang was on
hand once more. And when they see we was really gone and they couldn't get
us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so kind of
disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see THEIR
side of the matter.
I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so
I made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a
body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give
the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.
We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it
was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight
again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and
says:
"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great
Sahara, as sure as guns!"
He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:
"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?"
"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."
Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of
interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't
more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far
away for us to have traveled.
But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions
and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found out,
before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he
had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:
"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea
voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping
St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the
afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this
Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven
o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down,
and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 11
A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and set by my
watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we've
come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by
the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out-more than four hours and a half
out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of
Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted right-which we
wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering-wandering 'way down south of east,
and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map. You see how the
shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how fast we've traveled;
if we had gone straight east we would be long past England by this time.
You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast
a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is coming mighty close to
marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa; and it's just bully."
Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:
"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's. hain't seen no niggers
yit."
"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off
yonder? Gimme a glass."
He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched
across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.
"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and-"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"
"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly
well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself."
"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on
the GROUND."
"Tom, do you know that to be so?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."
He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if
Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and
sing out:
"Camels!-Camels!"
So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:
"Camels your granny; they're spiders."
"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the
air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? Spiders,
good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go down and milk
one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a caravan, that's what
it is, and it's a mile long."
"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."
"All right," he says, and give the command:
"Lower away."
As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and a
thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels
and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weatherJ-well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of a
sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.
The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their
stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and
scampered every which way, and so did the camels.
We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to get
together and form the procession again; then they started along, but we
could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the other
side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the mound
that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the
caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got nearer, he sneaked
down on the other side and rushed to the other men and horses-for that is
what they was-and we see them mount in a hurry; and next, here they come,
like a house afire, some with lances and some with long guns, and all of
them yelling the best they could.
They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a' been
six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they
broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and scurrying and
scampering around, and laying into each other like everything; and
whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded people
and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and camels racing off in
every direction.
At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went staggering
off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him, for we was
three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.
We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head bowed
down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance, and
thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half a
mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child, which
was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her before the
caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned
they had enough business on their hands for one while, anyway, with the
wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We swooped down and
stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which was
a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor, too, considering it
was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a horse; and then we
started for the mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near by, and
Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he was close back of her the
child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and
fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and snatched it and
hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and then snatched off a gold
chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged him again, and jerked up
the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the time; and Jim he shoved
for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we was back up in the sky and
the woman was staring up, with the back of her head between her shoulders
and the child with its arms locked around her neck. And there she stood,
as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in the sky.
"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of
us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the weather
and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north,
too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds-a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in the
world that could do that-except one, and that was a flea.
"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly
speakin'-"
"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"
"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.
No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He
mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."
"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"
"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don't."
"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"
"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em-anybody knows dat."
"Can't a man walk miles?"
"Yassir, he kin."
"As many as a railroad?"
"Yassir, if you give him time."
"Can't a flea?"
"Well-I s'pose so-ef you gives him heaps of time."
"Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to
judge by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that
COUNTS, ain't it?"
"Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom."
"It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come to
gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and your
railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than about
ten miles in an hour-not much over ten thousand times his own length. But
all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can jump a hundred
and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five jumps a second
too-seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one little second-for
he don't fool away any time stopping and starting-he does them both at the
same time; you'll see, if you try to put your finger on him. Now that's a
common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait; but you take an Eyetalian
FIRST-class, that's been the pet of the nobility all his life, and hasn't
ever knowed what want or sickness or exposure was, and he can jump more
than three hundred times his own length, and keep it up all day, five such
jumps every second, which is fifteen hundred times his own length. Well,
suppose a man could go fifteen hundred times his own length in a
second-say, a mile and a half. It's ninety miles a minute; it's
considerable more than five thousand miles an hour. Where's your man
NOW?-yes, and your bird, and your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they
don't amount to shucks 'longside of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled
down small."
Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:
"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"
"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."
"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no
respec' for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do
deserve it, dat's certain."
"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to do
all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing and
a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener, in the
same proportion-where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That flea would
be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more prevent it
than you can prevent lightning."
"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No,
sir, I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."
"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other
cretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of
them all. People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an
elephant's, and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He
can lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can
come anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and
is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment,
or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so. There's
folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of them.
I've never had one of them on me in my life."
"Mars Tom!"
"It's so; I ain't joking."
"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but there
it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always been
just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them as
not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.
We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for the
last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that solemn,
peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed down in
us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to feeling,
and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So we had
cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most noble good
lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes stretched out
on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.
It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to
find land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that-clean over
it. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't
want to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed
as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making me
do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want to
do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something else,
and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up here in
the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to eat, and
plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and no
pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the
world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and it's
such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.
We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever
see. The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we
see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of ink.
That's the kind of moonlight to have.
Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:
"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"
And the man says:
"Was he blind in his left eye?"
"Yes."
"Had he lost an upper front tooth?"
"Yes."
"Was his off hind leg lame?"
"Yes."
"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"
"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details-that's the one, and I'm
in a hurry. Where did you see him?"
"I hain't seen him at all," the man says.
"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"
"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a
camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in
his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,
and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because he
only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had
lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his
teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side-the ants
told me that; the honey leaked out on the other-the flies told me that. I
know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."
Jim says:
"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."
"That's all," Tom says.
"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"
"I don't know."
"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"
"No."
Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:
"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no
IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"
"No, I haven't."
I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and
the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's
fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he
whirls on me and says:
"What do YOU think of the tale?"
Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it
did seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale
stopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't
worth the trouble of telling.
Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I
reckoned he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be
only sad; and he says:
"Some people can see, and some can't-just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the
track."
I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one
of his irrulevances, I reckon-he was full of them, sometimes, when he was
in a close place and couldn't see no other way out-but I didn't mind. We'd
spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git away
from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I reckon,
much as he tried not to let on.
WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the
desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't
high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the
desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting
toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.
We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and
now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was stirring,
and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost right
under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about, perfectly
quiet, like they was asleep.
We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we
see that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us
hush down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down
slow and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was
men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and
shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books. And
yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just like
they was asleep.
Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most
of them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard.
Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it
tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying there
for years.
Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had
shawl belts with long, silvermounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels
had their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to the
dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We took a
small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and then we
wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that we could
think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would blow away
again, of course.
Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot
on the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around and
about till their food and water give out and they starved to death; but
Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and so
that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we wouldn't
think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.
Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes made
out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We wondered if
we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but Tom thought
it over and said no, it was a country that was full of robbers, and they
would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on us for putting the
temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished we had took all they
had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all left.
We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was
dreadful thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water,
but it was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to
scald your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water,
the best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that
would help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we
hadn't been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the