The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Undead

by Mark Twain

  I says:

  “All right; but wait a minute. There’s one more thing – a thing that nobody don’t know but me. And that is, there’s a slave that I’m a-trying to steal out of here, and it’s old Miss Watson’s Jim.”

  He says:

  “What! Why, we thought Jim lit out with your pap, or murdered you, or –“

  I says:

  “I know. It was none of those things. We came down the river together, and he got bound over and is a slave again. I’m a-going to steal him and I want you to keep mum and not let on – will you?”

  His eyes light up, and he says:

  “Will I? I’ll help you steal him!”

  Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. What a great day! With both Tom Sawyer and me working together, it was only a matter of time before Jim was a free man again.

  “So if you hear anything,” says I, “anything about a runaway slave, don’t say nothing about him, and don’t say I know nothing about him.”

  We spit on our hands and shook, as we always do, and then he put the trunk in my wagon, and he drove off. Of course, I forgot about going slow on accounts of being glad and full of think; so I get home a heap too quick for that length of trip, and the old gentleman rushed out the door and says:

  “Why, this is wonderful, wonderful. Who’d ‘a’ thought that old mare had it in her? I wish we’d ‘a’ timed her. Oh my, it’s wonderful. I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that horse now – I wouldn’t, honest. I’m going to take her and give her a bucket of water and cool her off. Oh my!”

  That was all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever seen. But it warn’t surprising; because he warn’t only just a farmer, he was a preacher, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation that they also used for quick and decent funerals so as to give the deceased a proper send-off – and right away – before they come back.

  About a half-hour later, Tom’s wagon pulled up to the front stile, and Aunt Sally she seen it through the window, because it was only fifty yards, and says:

  “Why, there’s somebody else come! I wonder who ‘tis? I recognize the driver and the wagon, but not the passenger. Jimmy! Run and tell Liz to put on an extra plate for supper.”

  Everybody made a rush for the front door, and the old gentleman brought out a fowling piece just out of habit. Tom had his store clothes on, and it was all I could do to keep from croaking like a Tennessee tree frog, or an Eastern toad, or doing one of the bird calls we used to signal each other with back home, but of course I dasn’t. The dogs surrounded him and smelt him up good, but as he didn’t smell ripe, nor off, but only of boy, they was all immediate friends.

  When he got in front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn’t want to disturb them, and he says:

  “Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?”

  “No, my boy,” says the old gentleman. “I’m sorry to say you’re misinformed; Nichols’s place is down another three miles more. But come in, come in.”

  Tom took a quick look back over his shoulder and says: “Drat. My driver’s almost out of sight.”

  “Yes, he’s gone. Well, you must come in and eat your dinner with us; and then we’ll hitch up and take you down to Nichols’s.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t put you through so much trouble. I’ll walk – I don’t mind the distance; them durn Zum don’t scare me.”

  “Well, they scare us plenty,” says the old gentleman. “It wouldn’t be Southern hospitality to let you walk off so close to nightfall. Come right in.”

  “Oh, do,” says Aunt Sally; “It ain’t a bit of trouble, not a bit in the world. You must stay. It’s a long, dusty three-mile walk, and it is too late to start out alone. Besides, I’ve already told ‘em to put on an extra plate when I seen you coming; so you mustn’t disappoint us. Come right in and make yourself to home.”

  So Tom thanked them very handsome, and let himself be persuaded, and came in. When he was in, he introduced himself proper and said he had come all the way from Columbus, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson – and he made a bow.

  Well, he run on and on, and on, making up stuff, about Columbus and everybody in it he could invent, and I start getting nervous how this was going to help me out of my scrape. Finally, he takes a breath and sighs and looks around the dinner table slow, and fetched up on the old gentleman’s eyes, and says: “I thought everyone’d be happier to see me.”

  The old gentleman was speechless.

  Tom says: “Why, Aunt Sally, ain’t you glad to see me neither?”

  And she was speechless too.

  Then he looks around the table the same way to me, and says:

  “Tom, didn’t you think Aunt Sally’d open her arms and say how happy she was to greet both Tom Sawyer and his brother Sid in the same afternoon?”

  “My lord!” she says, jumping almost over the table. “You impudent young rascal, to fool a person so –“ and then she hugged him and kissed him over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took what was left. After things get a little quiet again, she says:

  “Oh dear me, I ain’t never had such a surprise. We warn’t looking for you at all, Siddy, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him.”

  Tom says: “It were all intended for just Tom to come, but I begged and begged, and at the last minute, she let me come, too. She said two people would be safer traveling than one. But once we was on the river, Tom and me thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come first, and for me to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on that I was a stranger. But it was a mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain’t no healthy place left for a stranger to come to.”

  “Well Sid, I’m willing to stand a thousand such jokes, to have you here. To think of the performance you gave us! I don’t deny it, I was almost putrified with astonishment when you told me who you was.”

  We had dinner out in the open passage between the house and the kitchen, and it was some meal – enough food for seven families. None of that flabby, tough meat that’s laid in a damp cellar all night and tastes like everyone around the table has gone Zum and are gnawing at some unfortunate. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it, but it was worth it.

  There was considerable more talk at the table, and Tom and we was always aware of how we was supposed to answer and who we was supposed to be; but no one said a word about a runaway slave, and I was afraid to work up to it. But right near the end of dinner, one of the boys says:

  “Paw, mayn’t Tom and Sid and I go into town this evening for the big show?

  “No,” says the old man, “I reckon there ain’t going to be any big show; because that runaway slave told Burton and me all about those two scoundrels, and I reckon we’ve got a few surprises in store for them owdacious loafers.”

  So there it was!

  Soon, Tom and I bid a good night to all and went to the room we was sharing. As soon as the house got quiet, we clumb out of the window and down the lightning-rod, and struck towards town. I had the feeling that nobody was going to give the king and duke so much as a hint, and if I didn’t hurry up and give them one, they’d get into real trouble sure.

  On the road, Tom told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered, and how both pap and Jim disappeared, and what a stir that made, but nobody could put pap and Jim in the same gang, so it was all a puzzlement. And I told Tom all about the two rapscallions we was on our way to see.

  We struck the town right in the middle of it. Here comes a whooping rush of folks with torches, and an awful shouting and yelling, and men banging on tin pans and blowing horns. We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everyone filled up the show looking very innocent, and soon after it begun, someone gave a signal, and the whole house rose up and went for them.

  They had the duke and the king out in the square, and the king was all humbled and trying to crumple himself into a
ball, whilst the duke was standing up straight, letting himself be handled, but with his old horrible grin like he had the drop on all of ‘em. Then they brought out the tar and feathers, and the king started sobbing, but the duke began yelling at the crowd, but you couldn’t make out the words because there was so much other noise going on.

  The first slop of hot tar got put on the king’s bare back, and he let out a terrible cry. Then, just as sudden, the duke tears himself free and grabs the nearest man and just flings him out into the crowd, knocking over two or three other men. Then the crowd surged forward, no one being as frightened as I thought they ought to be, and they poured over the duke like ants going over a dead cat. The duke flung one or two more off and just pitched them off, but it just turned the crowd mean, and soon something else flew out of the pile, which I recognized as the duke’s ruined hand. It had somehow come loose. They mostly forgot about the king, but he warn’t going anywhere anyway with a back splattered with hot tar. They concentrated on the duke, and there warn’t no fear in the crowd, but only rage and anger. There was several men clamped onto every limb, several men sitting on his chest, and they knew exactly what they was dealing with. They took one of the buckets of hot tar and poured it over the duke’s head, until it filled his eyes and his ears and his mouth, and he thrashed around like he was fit to bust, but it warn’t pain at all on his part, just Zum rage. Then they eased up on the duke and let him come up off the ground and got out of his way, and he came to his feet and someone else dumped a bunch of feathers on his head, and then they let him stumble out into the night, knowing he warn’t going to last long in that pitiful state. The king they was more lenient on, I guess you could say; they tarred and feathered him considerable on the front and back, but didn’t slop it on his head, so he’d probably live. Then they trussed him up to a rail and marched him out of town.

  Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was very sorry for the pitiful rascals. It seemed I couldn’t feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. They both sure deserved something, but I don’t know if I could ‘a’ done it to them.

  So we poked along back home, and I wasn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame somehow – though I hadn’t done nothing. But that’s always the way: it didn’t make no difference what you do, a person’s conscience ain’t got no more sense than a Zum traipsin’ along in the night. A conscience takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t it don’t do him no good, no how. What good it is to feel a certain way and do nothing about it? A conscience might as well be tonsils. Tom Sawyer said he felt the same way.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  We Find Jim, and Nail Together Plans

  By and by as we walk back, Tom says:

  “Looky here, Huck! I bet I know where Jim is.”

  “No! Where?”

  “In that hut down by the ash-hopper. When we was going to dinner, didn’t you see one of them owned folk going in there with some vittles?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Well, he used a padlock when he went in and left off the food, and locked it again when he came out. That means there’s a prisoner in there, and it ain’t likely there’s two prisoners in such a small plantation. Jim’s in there, all right. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan to steal Jim, and I’ll do the same; we’ll take the one we like the best.”

  What a head for a boy to have! Well, I knowed pretty well where the right plan was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says:

  “Ready?”

  “Yes,” says I.

  “All right – bring it out.”

  “My plan is this,” I says. “First we find out for sure it’s Jim in there. Then the first dark night that comes along I steal the key out of the old man’s britches after they’ve gone to bed, we spring Jim, and shove off down the river, hiding daytimes and running nights. That would work, I’d wager.”

  “Work? Why, cert’nly it would work, but it’s too blame simple. There ain’t nothing to it. It’s as mild as goose milk.”

  I never said nothing, because I warn’t expecting nothing different. I knew he’d have his own plan, and he did. He told me what it was, and I could see in a minute it was worth fifteen of my plans, and would make Jim just as free as mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest. He was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing, and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind. It warn’t no use to disagree, because when he said he’d do a thing, he always done it.

  When we got home the house was all dark and quiet; so we went down to the hut by the ash-hopper to examine it. The hounds were awake, but they knowed us now, and didn’t make no more noise than country dogs is always doing at night. When we got close and could examine the hut, I pointed to a window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one stout board nailed across it. I says:

  “Here’s the ticket, Tom. We wrench off that board, and Jim can just crawl out.”

  Tom says:

  “I should hope we can find a way that’s a little more complicated than that, Huck Finn. There ain’t no hurry. Let’s keep looking around.”

  By and by we found an old shed close by that was unlocked and filled with some old rusted-out hoes and spades and a busted blow. Tom was so happy I knew it was just what he was looking for.

  “Now we’re all right. We’ll dig him out. It shouldn’t take more’n a week or so.”

  And so that was the plan. We went back to the house and was up again at break of day, down to the servants quarters to make friends with the man who was feeding Jim – if it was Jim that was being fed. The man was piling up a tin pan with meat and bread and things, and he was getting this ready whilst the others were preparing to leave for the fields. We told him we was bored and reckoned we’d tag along, and he said he didn’t care one way or t’other. When we got to the hut, it was just about dawn and we couldn’t hardly see anything, but it was Jim in there, sure enough; and he sings out:

  “Why, Huck! An’ Master Tom!”

  That was all we needed. Tom gave the servant who took us there a dime and told him not to tell a soul we all was acquainted with each other. Then Tom whispers to Jim and says:

  “Don’t ever let on that you know us. And if you hear any digging goin’ on at night, it’s us; we’re going to set you free.” Jim squeezed a hand through the slot in the window and let out a sob. Then we lit out of there.

  The next morning before breakfast, we struck down into the woods to talk, and by and by Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

  “Blame it all, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. And so it makes it all rotten tough to get up a difficult plan. There ain’t no watchman to be drugged – now really, there ought to be a watchman. There ain’t even a guard dog to give a sleeping mixture to. And then there’s Jim in there, only chained by one foot to the leg of his bed; why, all you’d have to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. Drat it, Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I’ve ever seen. You got to invent all the difficulties. We’ll have to hunt us up a saw first chance we get.”

  “What do we want of a saw?”

  “Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. We got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed off, so as to get the chain loose. He’ll need a rope ladder too, for his treacherous descent to the ground. We can tear up sheets easy enough.”

  “Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain’t got no use for a rope ladder. It’s only a drop of a foot ‘er two. We could just lean a regular wooden ladder against the wall.”

  “Oh shucks, Huck, if I was as ignorant as you I’d keep still – that’s what I’d do. Who ever heard of a prisoner escaping by a wooden ladder. Why, it’s perfectly ridiculous. A wooden ladder – I never!”

  “Well, all right, Tom, have it your own way. But if you’ll take my advice, we’ll just make sure th
at wooden ladder is available whenever we need one.”

  About then we heard the breakfast-horn blowing, so we cleared out for the house. On the way back, Tom came up with several more ideas, each one more amazing than the last: that Jim should keep a journal made out of his blood; that he should write mysterious messages on the bottom of tin plates and fling them out the window in hopes that a compassionate stranger might aid in his escape; and that we’d have to steal proper digging tools to dig him out with – the pick and shovels we seen in the unlocked shed warn’t suitable because it would make it all too easy. Dinner knives would be best, as that would be the kind of thing a real prisoner could get his hands on. So when I went into breakfast, I was looking to ‘borrow’ some kitchen knives for this purpose.

  That night, as soon as we reckoned everyone was asleep, we sneaked out of the house and went to work. It warn’t long before we was exhausted, trying to dig that big of a hole with regular dinner knives. So I brung out a pick and told him it was another dinner knife I found, and Tom thought about it and wiped the sweat off his face and said it was ok. Jim heard us digging from the inside, and he and I talked over old times together as Tom and I dug. Tom asked him a lot of questions about what he did every day, and Jim told him that Uncle Silas came in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally came in regular to make sure he had enough fresh water and had plenty to eat. Tom loved hearing all the details, as he said the more he knew, the better plans he could put together.

  Over the next few days, we stole some sheets for a rope ladder and a half-dozen candles. Tom borrowed some spoons from the house, and said we would hide them in Jim’s food so he could start digging on his side of the wall. He also reckoned we should smouch a candlestick so we would have something proper to burn the candles we had. We got everything little by little to Jim in the bottom of the pan that held his vittles.