It would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck
down into the woods; because Tom said we got to have _some_ light to
see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into
trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that’s
called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay
them in a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds,
and set down to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:
“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.
And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.
There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there _ought_ to be a
watchman. There ain’t even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. And
there’s Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of
his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip
off the chain. And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to
the punkin-headed nigger, and don’t send nobody to watch the nigger.
Jim could ’a’ got out of that window-hole before this, only there
wouldn’t be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg.
Why, drat it, Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got
to invent _all_ the difficulties. Well, we can’t help it; we got to do
the best we can with the materials we’ve got. Anyhow, there’s one
thing—there’s more honor in getting him out through a lot of
difficulties and dangers, where there warn’t one of them furnished to
you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had
to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that one
thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we simply
got to _let on_ that a lantern’s resky. Why, we could work with a
torchlight procession if we wanted to, _I_ believe. Now, whilst I
think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the
first chance we get.”
“What do we want of a saw?”
“What do we _want_ of a saw? Hain’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?”
“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the
chain off.”
“Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. You _can_ get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain’t you ever read
any books at all?—Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto
Chelleeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of
getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the
way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and
leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t be found, and
put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest
seneskal can’t see no sign of its being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg
is perfectly sound. Then, the night you’re ready, fetch the leg a
kick, down she goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. Nothing
to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it,
break your leg in the moat—because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too
short, you know—and there’s your horses and your trusty vassles, and
they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to
your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is. It’s gaudy, Huck.
I wish there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of
the escape, we’ll dig one.”
I says:
“What do we want of a moat when we’re going to snake him out from
under the cabin?”
But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had
his chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his
head; then sighs again, and says:
“No, it wouldn’t do—there ain’t necessity enough for it.”
“For what?” I says.
“Why, to saw Jim’s leg off,” he says.
“Good land!” I says; “why, there ain’t _no_ necessity for it. And what
would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?”
“Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn’t get the
chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would
be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain’t necessity
enough in this case; and, besides, Jim’s a nigger, and wouldn’t
understand the reasons for it, and how it’s the custom in Europe; so
we’ll let it go. But there’s one thing—he can have a rope ladder; we
can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we
can send it to him in a pie; it’s mostly done that way. And I’ve et
worse pies.”
“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain’t got no use for a
rope ladder.”
“He _has_ got use for it. How _you_ talk, you better say; you don’t
know nothing about it. He’s _got_ to have a rope ladder; they all do.”
“What in the nation can he _do_ with it?”
“_Do_ with it? He can hide it in his bed, can’t he? That’s what they
all do; and _he’s_ got to, too. Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to
do anything that’s regular; you want to be starting something fresh
all the time. S’pose he _don’t_ do nothing with it? ain’t it there in
his bed, for a clue, after he’s gone? and don’t you reckon they’ll
want clues? Of course they will. And you wouldn’t leave them any? That
would be a _pretty_ howdy-do, _wouldn’t_ it! I never heard of such a
thing.”
“Well,” I says, “if it’s in the regulations, and he’s got to have it,
all right, let him have it; because I don’t wish to go back on no
regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer—if we go to tearing up
our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we’re going to get into trouble
with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born. Now, the way I look at
it, a hickry-bark ladder don’t cost nothing, and don’t waste nothing,
and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick,
as any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain’t had no
experience, and so _he_ don’t care what kind of a—”
“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I’d keep
still—that’s what _I’d_ do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping
by a hickry-bark ladder? Why, it’s perfectly ridiculous.”
“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you’ll take my
advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothes-line.”
He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says:
“Borrow a shirt, too.”
“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”
“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”
“Journal your granny—_Jim_ can’t write.”
“S’pose he _can’t_ write—he can make marks on the shirt, can’t he, if
we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron
barrel-hoop?”
“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better
one; and quicker, too.”
“_Prisoners_ don’t have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull
pens out of, you muggins. They _always_ make their pens out of the
hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or
something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them
weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because
they’ve got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. _They_ wouldn’t use a
goose-quill if they had it. It ain’t regular.”
“Well, then, what ’ll we make him the ink out of?”
“Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that’s the common sort
and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that;
and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious
message to let the world know where he’s captivated, he can write it
on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the
window. The Iron Mask always done that, and it’s a blame’ good way,
too.”
“Jim ain’t got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan.”
“That ain’t nothing; we can get him some.”
“Can’t nobody _read_ his plates.”
“That ain’t got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn. All _he’s_ got to
do is to write on the plate and throw it out. You don’t _have_ to be
able to read it. Why, half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner
writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”
“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”
“Why, blame it all, it ain’t the _prisoner’s_ plates.”
“But it’s _somebody’s_ plates, ain’t it?”
“Well, spos’n it is? What does the _prisoner_ care whose—”
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we
cleared out for the house.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of
the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we
went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it
borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it
warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing
prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get
it, and nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no crime in a
prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s
his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a
perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for
to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it
would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person
would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal
everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss,
one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch
and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without
telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we
could steal anything we _needed._ Well, I says, I needed the
watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with;
there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d ’a’ wanted it to hide
a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would
’a’ been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no
advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw
over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a
chance to hog a watermelon.
Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was
settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then
Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to
keep watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the
woodpile to talk. He says:
“Everything’s all right now except tools; and that’s easy fixed.”
“Tools?” I says.
“Yes.”
“Tools for what?”
“Why, to dig with. We ain’t a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”
“Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig
a nigger out with?” I says.
He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:
“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,
and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out
with? Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at
all—what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero? Why, they
might as well lend him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels—why,
they wouldn’t furnish ’em to a king.”
“Well, then,” I says, “if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do
we want?”
“A couple of case-knives.”
“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”
“Yes.”
“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”
“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the _right_
way—and it’s the regular way. And there ain’t no _other_ way, that
ever _I_ heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any
information about these things. They always dig out with a
case-knife—and not through dirt, mind you; generly it’s through solid
rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and
ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the
Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that
way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, guess.”
“I don’t know. A month and a half.”
“_Thirty-seven year_—and he come out in China. _That’s_ the kind. I
wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock.”
“_Jim_ don’t know nobody in China.”
“What’s _that_ got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But
you’re always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can’t you stick to
the main point?”
“All right—_I_ don’t care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and
Jim don’t, either, I reckon. But there’s one thing, anyway—Jim’s too
old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won’t last.”
“Yes he will _last_, too. You don’t reckon it’s going to take
thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”
“How long will it take, Tom?”
“Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn’t
take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.
He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his next move will be to
advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can’t resk being as long
digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a
couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain, what I
recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can;
and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it
thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the
first time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that ’ll be the best way.”
“Now, there’s _sense_ in that,” I says. “Letting on don’t cost
nothing; letting on ain’t no trouble; and if it’s any object, I don’t
mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn’t
strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now, and
smouch a couple of case-knives.”
“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”
“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says,
“there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the
weather-boarding behind the smokehouse.”
He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:
“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and
smouch the knives—three of them.” So I done it.