Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then
the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for
an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say,
“Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t scrunch up like
that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty soon she would say,
“Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to
behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished
I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted
was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.
She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for
the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place.
Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I
made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it
would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all
day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much
of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer
would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad
about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome.
By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then
everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle,
and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and
tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so
lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the
leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away
off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a
dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was
trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was,
and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods
I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell
about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood,
and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every
night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some
company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I
flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it
was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an
awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and
most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my
tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up
a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I
hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horseshoe that
you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever
heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed
a spider.
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke;
for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn’t
know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go
boom—boom—boom—twelve licks; and all still again—stiller than ever.
Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the
trees—something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I
could just barely hear a “_me-yow! me-yow!_” down there. That was good!
Says I, “_me-yow! me-yow!_” as soft as I could, and then I put out the
light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped
down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough,
there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.
CHAPTER II.
We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end
of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape
our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and
made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big
nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him
pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and
stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:
“Who dah?”
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right
between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes
and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close
together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I
dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back,
right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch.
Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the
quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t
sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why
you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim
says:
“Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n.
Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and
listen tell I hears it agin.”
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most
touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears
come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. Then it begun to itch on the
inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn’t know how I was going
to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven
minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in
eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn’t stand it more’n a
minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then
Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was
pretty soon comfortable again.
Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said
no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I
warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would
slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn’t want him to try. I said
Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in
there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for
pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing
would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and
knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while,
everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of
the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on
a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake.
Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance,
and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees
again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time
Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that,
every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he
said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and
his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it,
and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers
would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up
to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with
their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.
Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen
fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about
such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout
witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.
Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string,
and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and
told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he
wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was
he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim
anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they
wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was
most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having
seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away
down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling,
where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling
ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile
broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo
Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the
old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile
and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our
hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn’t a noticed that there was a hole. We
went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and
sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:
“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his
name in blood.”
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had
wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the
band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything
to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person
and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep till
he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the
sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could use
that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he
must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the
secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt
up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the
list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse
put on it and be forgot forever.
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it
out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had
it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told
the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote
it in. Then Ben Rogers says:
“Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you going to do ’bout
him?”
“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.
“Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never find him these days. He
used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain’t been seen
in these parts for a year or more.”
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they
said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it
wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of
anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready