Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

etched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour
we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and
put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone
for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps
found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come
out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she
was a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing
what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and
dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours
catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they
warn’t the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of
the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul
was.

We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and
caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet’s
nest, but we didn’t. The family was at home. We didn’t give it right
up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we’d
tire them out or they’d got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we
got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right
again, but couldn’t set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes,
and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in
a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and
a rattling good honest day’s work: and hungry?—oh, no, I reckon not!
And there warn’t a blessed snake up there when we went back—we didn’t
half tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn’t
matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we
judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn’t no real
scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You’d see
them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they
generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most
of the time where you didn’t want them. Well, they was handsome and
striped, and there warn’t no harm in a million of them; but that never
made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed
what they might, and she couldn’t stand them no way you could fix it;
and every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn’t make no
difference what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and
light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to
Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take a-holt of one of them with the
tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble
out and lift a howl that you would think the house was afire. She
disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn’t
ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone
clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn’t over it
yet; she warn’t near over it; when she was setting thinking about
something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather
and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But
Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for some
reason or other.

We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she
allowed these lickings warn’t nothing to what she would do if we ever
loaded up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the lickings,
because they didn’t amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we had
to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other
things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim’s was when
they’d all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn’t like the
spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they’d lay for him,
and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats and
the snakes and the grindstone there warn’t no room in bed for him,
skasely; and when there was, a body couldn’t sleep, it was so lively,
and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at
one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats
was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so
he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t’other gang having a
circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would
take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out
this time he wouldn’t ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary.

Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape.
The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he
would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was
fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on
the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the
sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We reckoned we was
all going to die, but didn’t. It was the most undigestible sawdust I
ever see; and Tom said the same.

But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done now, at last; and we
was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had
wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get
their runaway nigger, but hadn’t got no answer, because there warn’t no
such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis
and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones it
give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn’t no time to lose. So Tom
said, now for the nonnamous letters.

“What’s them?” I says.

“Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one
way, sometimes another. But there’s always somebody spying around that
gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going
to light out of the Tooleries, a servant-girl done it. It’s a very good
way, and so is the nonnamous letters. We’ll use them both. And it’s
usual for the prisoner’s mother to change clothes with him, and she
stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We’ll do that, too.”

“But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for that
something’s up? Let them find it out for themselves—it’s their
lookout.”

“Yes, I know; but you can’t depend on them. It’s the way they’ve acted
from the very start—left us to do everything. They’re so confiding
and mullet-headed they don’t take notice of nothing at all. So if we
don’t give them notice there won’t be nobody nor nothing to interfere
with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape ’ll go
off perfectly flat; won’t amount to nothing—won’t be nothing to it.”

“Well, as for me, Tom, that’s the way I’d like.”

“Shucks!” he says, and looked disgusted. So I says:

“But I ain’t going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits
me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?”

“You’ll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that
yaller girl’s frock.”

“Why, Tom, that’ll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she
prob’bly hain’t got any but that one.”

“I know; but you don’t want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door.”

“All right, then, I’ll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my
own togs.”

“You wouldn’t look like a servant-girl then, would you?”

“No, but there won’t be nobody to see what I look like, anyway.”

“That ain’t got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just
to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it
or not. Hain’t you got no principle at all?”

“All right, I ain’t saying nothing; I’m the servant-girl. Who’s Jim’s
mother?”

“I’m his mother. I’ll hook a gown from Aunt Sally.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves.”

“Not much. I’ll stuff Jim’s clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed
to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim ’ll take the nigger
woman’s gown off of me and wear it, and we’ll all evade together. When
a prisoner of style escapes it’s called an evasion. It’s always called
so when a king escapes, f’rinstance. And the same with a king’s son; it
don’t make no difference whether he’s a natural one or an unnatural
one.”

So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench’s
frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door,
the way Tom told me to. It said:

Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. UNKNOWN FRIEND.

Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull
and crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a
coffin on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They
couldn’t a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts
laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering
through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said
“ouch!” if anything fell, she jumped and said “ouch!” if you happened
to touch her, when she warn’t noticing, she done the same; she couldn’t
face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something
behind her every time—so she was always a-whirling around sudden, and
saying “ouch,” and before she’d got two-thirds around she’d whirl back
again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she
dasn’t set up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he
never see a thing work more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done
right.

So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the
streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we
better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going
to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the
lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was
asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This
letter said:

Don’t betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of
cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your
runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as
you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang,
but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life
again, and will betray the helish design. They will sneak down from
northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go
in the nigger’s cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin
horn if I see any danger; but stead of that I will BA like a sheep
soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting
his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at
your leasure. Don’t do anything but just the way I am telling you, if
you do they will suspicion something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do
not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

UNKNOWN FRIEND