“Now, there’s sense in that,” I says. “Letting on don’t cost nothing; letting on ain’t no trouble; and if it’s any object, I don’t mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn’t strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives.”
“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”
“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says, “there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smokehouse.”
He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:
“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch the knives—three of them.” So I done it.
CHAPTER XXXVI
AS SOON as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said we was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because Jim’s counterpin hung down most to the ground, and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t see we’d done anything hardly. At last I says:
“This ain’t no thirty-seven-year job; this is a thirty-eight-year job, Tom Sawyer.”
He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. Then he says:
“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t a-going to work. If we was prisoners it would, because then we’d have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry; and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn’t get blistered, and we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But we can’t fool along; we got to rush; we ain’t got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way we’d have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well—couldn’t touch a case-knife with them sooner.”
“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”
“I’ll tell you. It ain’t right, and it ain’t moral, and I wouldn’t like it to get out; but there ain’t only just the one way: we got to dig him out with the picks, and let on it’s case-knives.”
“Now you’re talking!” I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says. “Picks is the thing, moral or no moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my Sunday-school book; and if a pick’s the handiest thing, that’s the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with; and I don’t give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther.”
“Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better. It might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick, without any letting on, because you don’t know no better; but it wouldn’t for me, because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife.”
He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and says:
“Gimme a case-knife.”
I didn’t know just what to do—but then I thought. I scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickax and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.
He was always just that particular. Full of principle.
So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. When I got upstairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn’t come it, his hands was so sore. At last he says:
“It ain’t no use, it can’t be done. What you reckon I better do? Can’t you think of no way?”
“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain’t regular. Come up the stairs, and let on it’s a lightning-rod.”
So he done it.
Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates. Tom says it wasn’t enough; but I said nobody wouldn’t ever see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they’d fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole—then we could tote them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says:
“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”
“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.”
He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn’t no need to decide on any of them yet. Said we’d got to post Jim first.
That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn’t wake him. Then we whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half the job was done. We crept in under Jim’s bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:
“Now I know how to fix it. We’ll send you some things by them.”
I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck” but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.
So he told Jim how we’d have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle’s coat pockets and he must steal them out; and we would tie things to aunt’s apron-strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as Tom said.
Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had aright down good sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they’d been chawed. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest
of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.
In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat’s notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in Jim’s pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warn’t ever anything could ’a’ worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.
And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim’s bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn’t hardly room in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches” once, and keeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim’s meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed he’d fixed the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he’d been imagining he saw something again. He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:
“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool, but if I didn’t b’lieve I see most a million dogs, er devils, er some’n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese tracks. I did, mos’ sholy. Mars Sid, I felt um—I felt um, sah; dey was all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s on one er dem witches jis’ wunst—on’y jis’ wunst—it’s all I’d ast. But mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme ’lone, I does.”
Tom says:
“Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this runaway nigger’s breakfast-time? It’s because they’re hungry; that’s the reason. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for you to do.”
“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s I gwyne to make ’m a witch pie? I doan’ know how to make it. I hain’t ever hearn er sich a thing b’fo’.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”
“Will you do it, honey?—will you? I’ll wusshup de groun’ und’ yo’ foot, I will!”
“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you, and you’ve been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we’ve put in the pan, don’t you let on you see it at all. And don’t you look when Jim unloads the pan—something might happen, I don’t know what. And above all, don’t you handle the witch things.”
“Hannel ’m, Mars Sid? What is you a-talkin’ ’bout? I wouldn’ lay de weight er my finger on um, not f’r ten hund’d thous’n billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
THAT WAS all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally’s apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t’other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger’s house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn’t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.
And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble with the other, and says:
“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted low, and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt.”
My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would ’a’ sold out for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right again—it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:
“It’s most uncommon curious, I can’t understand it. I know perfectly well I took it off, because—”
“Because you hain’t got but one on. Just listen at the man! I know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the clo’s-line yesterday—I see it there myself. But it’s gone, that’s the long and the short of it, and you’ll just have to change to a red flann’l one till I can get time to make a new one. And it ’ll be the third I’ve made in two years. It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with ’m all is more’n I can make out. A body’d think you would learn to take some sort of care of ’em at your time of life.”
“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn’t to be altogether my fault, because, you know, I don’t see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they’re on me; and I don’t believe I’ve ever lost one of them off of me.”
“Well, it ain’t your fault if you haven’t, Silas; you’d ’a’ done it if you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, nuther. Ther’s a spoon gone; and that ain’t all. There was ten, and now ther’s only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that’s certain.”
“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”
“Ther’s six candles gone—that’s what. The rats could ’a’ got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don’t walk off with the whole place, the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t do it; and if they warn’t fools they’d sleep in your hair, Silas—you’d never find it out; but you can’t lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know.”
“Well, Sally, I’m in fault, and I acknowledge it; I’ve been remiss; but I won’t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year ’ll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!”
Whack come the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says:
“Missus, dey’s a sheet gone.”
“A sheet gone! Well, for the land’s sake!”
“I’ll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.
“Oh, do shet up!—s’pose the rats took the sheet? Where’s it gone, Lize?”
“Clah to goodness I hain’t no notion, Miss’ Sally. She wuz on de clo’s-line yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain’ dah no mo’ now.”
“I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the beat of it in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can—”
“Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey’s a brass cannelstick miss’n.”
“Cler out from here, you hussy, er I’ll take a skillet to ye!”
Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I rec
koned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:
“It’s just as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too. How’d it get there?”
“I reely don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, “or you know I would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain’t in; but I’ll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I’ll know I didn’t put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, and—”
“Oh, for the land’s sake! Give a body a rest! Go ’long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don’t come nigh me again till I’ve got back my peace of mind.”
I’d ’a’ heard her if she’d ’a’ said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and I’d ’a’ got up and obeyed her if I’d ’a’ been dead. As we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:
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