As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down
the lightning-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 we 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 counterpin 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 pickax 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 onto 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!”
[Illustration: TOM ADVISES A WITCH PIE]
“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.”