Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

ightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our
pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the
way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom
said he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it, and
when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there
was any hole there, because Jim’s counter-pin hung down most to the
ground, and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.
So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we
was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t see
we’d done anything hardly. At last I says:

“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job,
Tom Sawyer.”

He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was
thinking. Then he says:

“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t a-going to work. If we was prisoners
it would, because then we’d have as many years as we wanted, and no
hurry; and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while
they was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn’t get blistered, and
we could keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right,
and the way it ought to be done. But we can’t fool along; we got to
rush; we ain’t got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night
this way we’d have to knock off for a week to let our hands get
well—couldn’t touch a case-knife with them sooner.”

“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”

“I’ll tell you. It ain’t right, and it ain’t moral, and I wouldn’t like
it to get out; but there ain’t only just the one way: we got to dig him
out with the picks, and let on it’s case-knives.”

“Now you’re talking!” I says; “your head gets leveler and leveler
all the time, Tom Sawyer,” I says. “Picks is the thing, moral or no
moral; and as for me, I don’t care shucks for the morality of it,
nohow. When I start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a
Sunday-school book, I ain’t no ways particular how it’s done so it’s
done. What I want is my nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or
what I want is my Sunday-school book; and if a pick’s the handiest
thing, that’s the thing I’m a-going to dig that nigger or that
watermelon or that Sunday-school book out with; and I don’t give a dead
rat what the authorities thinks about it nuther.”

“Well,” he says, “there’s excuse for picks and letting-on in a case
like this; if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t
stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is
wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t
ignorant and knows better. It might answer for you to dig Jim out
with a pick, without any letting on, because you don’t know no
better; but it wouldn’t for me, because I do know better. Gimme a
case-knife.”

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and
says:

“Gimme a case-knife.”

I didn’t know just what to do—but then I thought. I scratched around
amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he
took it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular. Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about,
and made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as
long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for
it. When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing
his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn’t come it, his
hands was so sore. At last he says:

“It ain’t no use, it can’t be done. What you reckon I better do? Can’t
you think of no way?”

“Yes,” I says, “but I reckon it ain’t regular. Come up the stairs, and
let on it’s a lightning-rod.”

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,
for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I
hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three
tin plates. Tom says it wasn’t enough; but I said nobody wouldn’t ever
see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they’d fall in the
dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole—then we could tote
them back and he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then
he says:

“Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim.”

“Take them in through the hole,” I says, “when we get it done.”

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever
heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By-and-by
he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn’t no need
to decide on any of them yet. Said we’d got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took
one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard
Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn’t wake him. Then we
whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half
the job was done. We crept in under Jim’s bed and into the cabin, and
pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim
awhile, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him
up gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and
called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for
having us hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with
right away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed
him how unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our
plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an
alarm; and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got
away, sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we set there and
talked over old times awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions,
and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with
him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty
to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says:

“Now I know how to fix it. We’ll send you some things by them.”

I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most jackass
ideas I ever struck;” but he never paid no attention to me; went right
on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.

So he told Jim how we’d have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and
other large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on
the lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them;
and we would put small things in uncle’s coat-pockets and he must steal
them out; and we would tie things to aunt’s apron-strings or put them
in her apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would
be and what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the
shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he
couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white
folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he
would do it all just as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good
sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to
bed, with hands that looked like they’d been chawed. Tom was in high
spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the
most intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we
would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our
children to get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better
and better the more he got used to it. He said that in that way it
could be strung out to as much as eighty year, and would be the best
time on record. And he said it would make us all celebrated that had a
hand in it.

In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in
his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat’s
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim’s pan, and we went along with Nat to see how
it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most
mashed all his teeth out; and there warn’t ever anything could a worked
better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only
just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always getting into
bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he
jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a
couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim’s bed; and they kept on
piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn’t hardly room
in there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to
door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered “Witches” once, and keeled
over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was
dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim’s meat, and
the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back
again and shut the door, and I knowed he’d fixed the other door too.
Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and
asking him if he’d been imagining he saw something again. He raised up,
and blinked his eyes around, and says:

“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool, but if I didn’t b’lieve I see most a
million dogs, er devils, er some’n, I wisht I may die right heah in
dese tracks. I did, mos’ sholy. Mars Sid, I felt um—I felt um, sah;
dey was all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s on
one er dem witches jis’ wunst—on’y jis’ wunst—it’s all I’d ast. But
mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme ’lone, I does.”

Tom says:

“Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at
this runaway nigger’s breakfast-time? It’s because they’re hungry;
that’s the reason. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for
you to do.”

“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s I gwyne to make ’m a witch pie? I doan’
know how to make it. I hain’t ever hearn er sich a thing b’fo’.”

“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”

“Will you do it, honey?—will you? I’ll wusshup de groun’ und’ yo’ foot,
I will!”

“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you, and you’ve been good to us and
showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we
come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we’ve put in the
pan, don’t you let on you see it at all. And don’t you look when Jim
unloads the pan—something might happen, I don’t know what. And above
all, don’t you handle the witch-things.”

“Hannel ’m, Mars Sid? What is you a-talkin’ ’bout? I wouldn’ lay de
weight er my finger on um, not f’r ten hund’d thous’n billion dollars,
I wouldn’t.”