The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels

by Various Authors

  “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.

  CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE

  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 leat
hery, 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, silver-mounted 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 lost people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn’t have a drink, we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open and pant like a dog.

  Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we’d got to find an oasis or there warn’t no telling what would happen. So we done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms got so tired we couldn’t hold them any more. Two hours—three hours—just gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don’t know what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain he ain’t ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn’t stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker, and give it up.

  But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and shiny, with pa’m-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn’t anything to us; we just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we couldn’t seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn’t get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone!

  Tom’s eyes took a spread, and he says:

  “Boys, it was a MYridge!” Said it like he was glad. I didn’t see nothing to be glad about. I says:

  “Maybe. I don’t care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is, what’s become of it?”

  Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn’t speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he could ‘a’ done it. Tom says:

  “What’s BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it’s gone.”

  “Yes, I know; but where’s it gone TO?”

  He looked me over and says:

  “Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don’t you know what a myridge is?”

  “No, I don’t. What is it?”

  “It ain’t anything but imagination. There ain’t anything TO it.”

  It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:

  “What’s the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn’t I see the lake?”

  “Yes—you think you did.”

  “I don’t think nothing about it, I DID see it.”

  “I tell you you DIDN’T see it either—because it warn’t there to see.”

  It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of pleading and distressed:

  “Mars Tom, PLEASE don’t say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You ain’t only reskin’ yo’ own self, but you’s reskin’ us—same way like Anna Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah—I seen it jis’ as plain as I sees you en Huck dis minute.”

  I says:

  “Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW, then!”

  “Yes, Mars Tom, hit’s so—you can’t deny it. We all seen it, en dat PROVE it was dah.”

  “Proves it! How does it prove it?”

  “Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might be drunk, or dreamy or suthin’, en he could be mistaken; en two might, maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it’s SO. Dey ain’t no gittin’ aroun’ dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom.”

  “I don’t know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?”

  “Course it did. En besides, dey warn’t no ‘casion to prove it. A body ‘at’s got any sense ain’t gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now—a sailin’ thoo de sky, like she allays done.”

  Tom turned on me, then, and says:

  “What do YOU say—is the sun standing still?”

  “Tom Sawyer, what’s the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that ain’t blind can see it don’t stand still.”

  “Well,” he says, “I’m lost in the sky with no company but a passel of low-down animals that don’t know no more than the head boss of a university did three or four hundred years ago.”

  It warn’t fair play, and I let him know it. I says:

  “Throwin’ mud ain’t arguin’, Tom Sawyer.”

  “Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah’s de lake agi’n!” yelled Jim, just then. “NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?”

  Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says:

  “I reckon you’re satisfied now, Tom Sawyer.”

  But he says, perfectly ca’m:

  “Yes, satisfied there ain’t no lake there.”

  Jim says:

  “DON’T talk so, Mars Tom—it sk’yers me to hear you. It’s so hot, en you’s so thirsty, dat you ain’t in yo’ right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don’t she look good! ‘clah I doan’ know how I’s gwine to wait tell we gits dah, I’s SO thirsty.”

  “Well, you’ll have to wait; and it won’t do you no good, either, because there ain’t no lake there, I tell you.”

  I says:

  “Jim, d
on’t you take your eye off of it, and I won’t, either.”

  “‘Deed I won’t; en bless you, honey, I couldn’t ef I wanted to.”

  We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it—and all of a sudden it was gone again! Jim staggered, and ‘most fell down. When he got his breath he says, gasping like a fish:

  “Mars Tom, hit’s a GHOS’, dat’s what it is, en I hopes to goodness we ain’t gwine to see it no mo’. Dey’s BEEN a lake, en suthin’s happened, en de lake’s dead, en we’s seen its ghos’; we’s seen it twiste, en dat’s proof. De desert’s ha’nted, it’s ha’nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le’’s git outen it; I’d ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag’in en de ghos’ er dat lake come a-mournin’ aroun’ us en we asleep en doan’ know de danger we’s in.”

  “Ghost, you gander! It ain’t anything but air and heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person’s imagination. If I—gimme the glass!”

  He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

  “It’s a flock of birds,” he says. “It’s getting toward sundown, and they’re making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean business—maybe they’re going for food or water, or both. Let her go to starboard!—Port your hellum! Hard down! There—ease up—steady, as you go.”

  We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

  “Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the birds.”

  Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was most crying, and says: