Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got
there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down
on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and
says:
“Now I can have a _good_ look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry
for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at
last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep’
you?—boat get aground?”
“Yes’m—she—”
“Don’t say yes’m—say Aunt Sally. Where’d she get aground?”
I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the
boat would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on
instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up—from down towards
Orleans. That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names
of bars down that way. I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the
name of the one we got aground on—or—Now I struck an idea, and fetched
it out:
“It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little. We
blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
_Lally Rook_, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.
And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas
knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I
remember now, he _did_ die. Mortification set in, and they had to
amputate him. But it didn’t save him. Yes, it was mortification—that
was it. He turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious
resurrection. They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle’s been up
to the town every day to fetch you. And he’s gone again, not more’n an
hour ago; he’ll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road,
didn’t you?—oldish man, with a—”
“No, I didn’t see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the
town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get
here too soon; and so I come down the back way.”
“Who’d you give the baggage to?”
“Nobody.”
“Why, child, it’ll be stole!”
“Not where _I_ hid it I reckon it won’t,” I says.
“How’d you get your breakfast so early on the boat?”
It was kinder thin ice, but I says:
“The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have
something to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to
the officers’ lunch, and give me all I wanted.”
I was getting so uneasy I couldn’t listen good. I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump
them a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn’t get no show, Mrs.
Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills
streak all down my back, because she says:
“But here we’re a-running on this way, and you hain’t told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them. Now I’ll rest my works a little, and you
start up yourn; just tell me _everything_—tell me all about ’m all
every one of ’m; and how they are, and what they’re doing, and what
they told you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of.”
Well, I see I was up a stump—and up it good. Providence had stood by me
this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I see it
warn’t a bit of use to try to go ahead—I’d _got_ to throw up my hand.
So I says to myself, here’s another place where I got to resk the
truth. I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in
behind the bed, and says:
“Here he comes! Stick your head down lower—there, that’ll do; you can’t
be seen now. Don’t you let on you’re here. I’ll play a joke on him.
Children, don’t you say a word.”
I see I was in a fix now. But it warn’t no use to worry; there warn’t
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from
under when the lightning struck.
I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in;
then the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:
“Has he come?”
“No,” says her husband.
“Good-_ness_ gracious!” she says, “what in the world can have become of
him?”
“I can’t imagine,” says the old gentleman; “and I must say it makes me
dreadful uneasy.”
“Uneasy!” she says; “I’m ready to go distracted! He _must_ a come; and
you’ve missed him along the road. I _know_ it’s so—something tells me
so.”
“Why, Sally, I _couldn’t_ miss him along the road—_you_ know that.”
“But oh, dear, dear, what _will_ Sis say! He must a come! You must a
missed him. He—”
“Oh, don’t distress me any more’n I’m already distressed. I don’t know
what in the world to make of it. I’m at my wit’s end, and I don’t mind
acknowledging ’t I’m right down scared. But there’s no hope that he’s
come; for he _couldn’t_ come and me miss him. Sally, it’s terrible—just
terrible—something’s happened to the boat, sure!”
“Why, Silas! Look yonder!—up the road!—ain’t that somebody coming?”
He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs.
Phelps the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the
bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from
the window there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire,
and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman
stared, and says:
“Why, who’s that?”
“Who do you reckon ’t is?”
“I hain’t no idea. Who _is_ it?”
“It’s _Tom Sawyer!_”
By jings, I most slumped through the floor! But there warn’t no time to
swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on
shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and
cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary,
and the rest of the tribe.
But if they was joyful, it warn’t nothing to what I was; for it was
like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they
froze to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it
couldn’t hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family—I
mean the Sawyer family—than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.
And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the
mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was
all right, and worked first-rate; because _they_ didn’t know but what
it would take three days to fix it. If I’d a called it a bolthead it
would a done just as well.
Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and
comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by-and-by I hear a
steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, s’pose
Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And s’pose he steps in here any
minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep
quiet? Well, I couldn’t _have_ it that way; it wouldn’t do at all. I
must go up the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I
would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman
was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse
myself, and I druther he wouldn’t take no trouble about me.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a
wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and
waited till he come along. I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside,
and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed
two or three times like a person that’s got a dry throat, and then
says:
“I hain’t ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want
to come back and ha’nt _me_ for?”
I says:
“I hain’t come back—I hain’t been _gone_.”
When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn’t quite
satisfied yet. He says:
“Don’t you play nothing on me, because I wouldn’t on you. Honest injun,
now, you ain’t a ghost?”
“Honest injun, I ain’t,” I says.
“Well—I—I—well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can’t somehow
seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn’t you ever murdered _at
all?_”
“No. I warn’t ever murdered at all—I played it on them. You come in
here and feel of me if you don’t believe me.”
So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me
again he didn’t know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it
right off, because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it
hit him where he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by-and-by; and
told his driver to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told
him the kind of a fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He
said, let him alone a minute, and don’t disturb him. So he thought and
thought, and pretty soon he says:
“It’s all right; I’ve got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it’s your’n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the
house about the time you ought to; and I’ll go towards town a piece,
and take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after
you; and you needn’t let on to know me at first.”
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 nigger here that I’m
a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is _Jim_—old Miss
Watson’s Jim.”
He says:
“What! Why, Jim is—”
He stopped and went to studying. I says:
“_I_ know what you’ll say. You’ll say it’s dirty, low-down business;
but what if it is? _I_’m low down; and I’m a-going to steal him, and I
want you keep mum and not let on. Will you?”
His eye lit up, and he says:
“I’ll _help_ you steal him!”
Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard—and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell
considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a
_nigger stealer!_
“Oh, shucks!” I says; “you’re joking.”
“I ain’t joking, either.”
“Well, then,” I says, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said
about a runaway nigger, don’t forget to remember that _you_ don’t know
nothing about him, and _I_ don’t know nothing about him.”
Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way
and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on
accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too
quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and
he says:
“Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to
do it? I wish we’d a timed her. And she hain’t sweated a hair—not a
hair. It’s wonderful. Why, I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that
horse now—I wouldn’t, honest; and yet I’d a sold her for fifteen
before, and thought ’twas all she was worth.”
That’s all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.
But it warn’t surprising; because he warn’t only just a farmer, he was
a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the
plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church
and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it
was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that,
and done the same way, down South.
In about half an hour Tom’s wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt
Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty
yards, and says:
“Why, there’s somebody come! I wonder who ’tis? Why, I do believe it’s
a stranger. Jimmy” (that’s one of the children) “run and tell Lize to
put on another plate for dinner.”
Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a
stranger don’t come _every_ year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever,
for interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting