Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now, and
so I won’t either; I’m a-going to see what’s going on here. So I
dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in
the dark till there warn’t but one stateroom betwixt me and the
cross-hall of the texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the
floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of
them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol.
This one kept pointing the pistol at the man’s head on the floor, and
saying:
“I’d _like_ to! And I orter, too—a mean skunk!”
The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, “Oh, please don’t, Bill;
I hain’t ever goin’ to tell.”
And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and
say:
“’Deed you _ain’t!_ You never said no truer thing ’n that, you bet
you.” And once he said: “Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn’t got the
best of him and tied him he’d a killed us both. And what _for?_ Jist
for noth’n. Jist because we stood on our _rights_—that’s what for. But
I lay you ain’t a-goin’ to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put
_up_ that pistol, Bill.”
Bill says:
“I don’t want to, Jake Packard. I’m for killin’ him—and didn’t he kill
old Hatfield jist the same way—and don’t he deserve it?”
“But I don’t _want_ him killed, and I’ve got my reasons for it.”
“Bless yo’ heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forgit you
long’s I live!” says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.
Packard didn’t take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a
nail and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned
Bill to come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the
boat slanted so that I couldn’t make very good time; so to keep from
getting run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper
side. The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to
my stateroom, he says:
“Here—come in here.”
And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in
the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there,
with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see
them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they’d been having.
I was glad I didn’t drink whisky; but it wouldn’t made much difference
anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed me because I
didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body _couldn’t_
breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to
kill Turner. He says:
“He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares
to him _now_ it wouldn’t make no difference after the row and the way
we’ve served him. Shore’s you’re born, he’ll turn State’s evidence; now
you hear _me_. I’m for putting him out of his troubles.”
“So’m I,” says Packard, very quiet.
“Blame it, I’d sorter begun to think you wasn’t. Well, then, that’s all
right. Le’s go and do it.”
“Hold on a minute; I hain’t had my say yit. You listen to me.
Shooting’s good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s _got_ to be
done. But what _I_ say is this: it ain’t good sense to go court’n
around after a halter if you can git at what you’re up to in some way
that’s jist as good and at the same time don’t bring you into no resks.
Ain’t that so?”
“You bet it is. But how you goin’ to manage it this time?”
“Well, my idea is this: we’ll rustle around and gather up whatever
pickins we’ve overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and
hide the truck. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be
more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the
river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it
but his own self. I reckon that’s a considerble sight better ’n killin’
of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git aroun’
it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”
“Yes, I reck’n you are. But s’pose she _don’t_ break up and wash off?”
“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can’t we?”
“All right, then; come along.”
So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled
forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse
whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a
moan, and I says:
“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a
gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and set
her drifting down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the
wreck there’s one of ’em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their
boat we can put _all_ of ’em in a bad fix—for the Sheriff ’ll get ’em.
Quick—hurry! I’ll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You
start at the raft, and—”
“Oh, my lordy, lordy! _Raf’?_ Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done broke
loose en gone I—en here we is!”
CHAPTER XIII.
Well, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with
such a gang as that! But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering. We’d
_got_ to find that boat now—had to have it for ourselves. So we went
a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was,
too—seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim
said he didn’t believe he could go any further—so scared he hadn’t
hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left
on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck
for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along
forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the
edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the
cross-hall door, there was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely
see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been
aboard of her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his
head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone;
but he jerked it in again, and says:
“Heave that blame lantern out o’ sight, Bill!”
He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and
set down. It was Packard. Then Bill _he_ come out and got in. Packard
says, in a low voice:
“All ready—shove off!”
I couldn’t hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill
says:
“Hold on—’d you go through him?”
“No. Didn’t you?”
“No. So he’s got his share o’ the cash yet.”
“Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money.”
“Say, won’t he suspicion what we’re up to?”
“Maybe he won’t. But we got to have it anyway. Come along.”
So they got out and went in.
The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half
second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my
knife and cut the rope, and away we went!
We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak nor whisper, nor hardly
even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of
the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was
a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every
last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.
When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern
show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed
by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to
understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.
Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the
first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had
time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for
murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain’t no
telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how
would _I_ like it? So says I to Jim:
“The first light we see we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above
it, in a place where it’s a good hiding-place for you and the skiff,
and then I’ll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go
for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung
when their time comes.”
But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again,
and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light
showed; everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river,
watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the
rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by-and-by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we
made for it.
It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We
seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go
for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole
there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told
Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars
and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it, three or four more
showed—up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore
light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by, I see it was a
lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferry-boat. I skimmed
around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and
by-and-by I found him roosting on the bitts, forward, with his head
down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves,
and begun to cry.
He stirred up, in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only
me, he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:
“Hello, what’s up? Don’t cry, bub. What’s the trouble?”
I says:
“Pap, and mam, and sis, and—”
Then I broke down. He says:
“Oh, dang it now, _don’t_ take on so; we all has to have our troubles,
and this’n ’ll come out all right. What’s the matter with ’em?”
“They’re—they’re—are you the watchman of the boat?”
“Yes,” he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. “I’m the captain
and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head
deck-hand; and sometimes I’m the freight and passengers. I ain’t as
rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can’t be so blame’ generous and good to
Tom, Dick and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he
does; but I’ve told him a many a time ’t I wouldn’t trade places with
him; for, says I, a sailor’s life’s the life for me, and I’m derned if
_I’d_ live two mile out o’ town, where there ain’t nothing ever goin’
on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I—”
I broke in and says:
“They’re in an awful peck of trouble, and—”
“_Who_ is?”
“Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you’d take your
ferry-boat and go up there—”
“Up where? Where are they?”
“On the wreck.”
“What wreck?”
“Why, there ain’t but one.”
“What, you don’t mean the _Walter Scott?_”
“Yes.”
“Good land! what are they doin’ _there_, for gracious sakes?”
“Well, they didn’t go there a-purpose.”
“I bet they didn’t! Why, great goodness, there ain’t no chance for ’em
if they don’t git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they
ever git into such a scrape?”
“Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town—”
“Yes, Booth’s Landing—go on.”
“She was a-visiting there at Booth’s Landing, and just in the edge of
the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry
to stay all night at her friend’s house, Miss What-you-may-call-her I
disremember her name—and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around
and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and
saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and
the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard
the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in our