Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

f 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
to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss
Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:

“Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.”

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with,
and I made my mark on the paper.

“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of business of this Gang?”

“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.

“But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—”

“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; it’s burglary,”
says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We
are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks
on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly
it’s considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the
cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.”

“Ransomed? What’s that?”

“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so
of course that’s what we’ve got to do.”

“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”

“Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the
books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books,
and get things all muddled up?”

“Oh, that’s all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation
are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to
them?—that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it
is?”

“Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they’re dead.”

“Now, that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said
that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a
bothersome lot they’ll be, too—eating up everything, and always trying
to get loose.”

“How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody’s got to set up all night
and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s
foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as
they get here?”

“Because it ain’t in the books so—that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don’t you?—that’s the idea. Don’t you
reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct
thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn ’em anything? Not by a good
deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we
kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill
the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You
fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and
by-and-by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any
more.”

“Well, if that’s the way I’m agreed, but I don’t take no stock in it.
Mighty soon we’ll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows
waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers.
But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say.”

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t
want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom
give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and
meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he
wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked
to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get
together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom
Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so
started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was
breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was
dog-tired.