The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels

by Various Authors

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

  “Atlantic Ocean—Atlantic. Land, don’t it sound great! And that’s IT—and WE are looking at it—we! Why, it’s just too splendid to believe!”

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

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

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

  CHAPTER IV. STORM

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

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

  The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on again. He said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would keep up this 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 coat-sleeve, 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.

  CHAPTER V. LAND

  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 s
aid 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!”