CHAPTER II. THE BALLOON ASCENSION
CHAPTER III. TOM EXPLAINS
CHAPTER IV. STORM
CHAPTER V. LAND
CHAPTER VI. IT’S A CARAVAN
CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA
CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE
CHAPTER IX. TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
CHAPTER X. THE TREASURE-HILL
CHAPTER XI. THE SAND-STORM
CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE
CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM’S PIPE
CHAPTER I.
TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES
Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I
mean the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the
darky Jim free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn’t. It only just
p’isoned him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we
three came back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long
travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and
speeches, and everybody hurrah’d and shouted, it made us heroes, and
that was what Tom Sawyer had always been hankering to be.
For a while he _was_ satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he
tilted up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it.
Some called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up
fit to bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we
only went down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but
Tom went by the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good
deal, but land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM.
Well, I don’t know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn’t
been for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and
slim, and kind o’ good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account
of his age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much
as thirty years he’d been the only man in the village that had a
reputation—I mean a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he
was mortal proud of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that
thirty years he had told about that journey over a million times and
enjoyed it every time. And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and
sets everybody admiring and gawking over _his_ travels, and it just
give the poor old man the high strikes. It made him sick to listen to
Tom, and to hear the people say “My land!” “Did you ever!” “My goodness
sakes alive!” and all such things; but he couldn’t pull away from it,
any more than a fly that’s got its hind leg fast in the molasses. And
always when Tom come to a rest, the poor old cretur would chip in on
_his_ same old travels and work them for all they were worth; but they
were pretty faded, and didn’t go for much, and it was pitiful to see.
And then Tom would take another innings, and then the old man again—and
so on, and so on, for an hour and more, each trying to beat out the
other.
You see, Parsons’ travels happened like this: When he first got to be
postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for
somebody he didn’t know, and there wasn’t any such person in the
village. Well, he didn’t know what to do, nor how to act, and there the
letter stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of
it gave him a conniption. The postage wasn’t paid on it, and that was
another thing to worry about. There wasn’t any way to collect that ten
cents, and he reckon’d the gov’ment would hold him responsible for it
and maybe turn him out besides, when they found he hadn’t collected it.
Well, at last he couldn’t stand it any longer. He couldn’t sleep
nights, he couldn’t eat, he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he
da’sn’t ask anybody’s advice, for the very person he asked for advice
might go back on him and let the gov’ment know about the letter. He had
the letter buried under the floor, but that did no good; if he happened
to see a person standing over the place it’d give him the cold shivers,
and loaded him up with suspicions, and he would sit up that night till
the town was still and dark, and then he would sneak there and get it
out and bury it in another place. Of course, people got to avoiding him
and shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking
and acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something
terrible, they didn’t know what, and if he had been a stranger they
would’ve lynched him.
Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn’t stand it any longer; so he
made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the
President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole
thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay
it before the whole gov’ment, and say, “Now, there she is—do with me
what you’re a mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent
man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving
behind me a family that must starve and yet hadn’t had a thing to do
with it, which is the whole truth and I can swear to it.”
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some
stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took
him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of
villages and four cities. He was gone ’most eight weeks, and there
never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His
travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most
talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the
country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at
him—and there they’d stand and gawk, and he’d gabble. You never see
anything like it.
Well, there wasn’t any way now to settle which was the greatest
traveler; some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed
that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that
whatever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and
climate. It was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up
their dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead _that_ way. That
bullet-wound in Tom’s leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck
against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too,
for Tom didn’t set still as he’d orter done, to be fair, but always got
up and sauntered around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up
the adventure that _he_ had in Washington; for Tom never let go that
limp when his leg got well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept
it good as new right along.
Nat’s adventure was like this; I don’t know how true it is; maybe he
got it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that
he _did_ know how to tell it. He could make anybody’s flesh crawl, and
he’d turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women
and girls got so faint they couldn’t stick it out. Well, it was this
way, as near as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out
to the President’s house with his letter, and they told him the
President was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for
Philadelphia—not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat ’most
dropped, it made him so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn’t know
what to do. But just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly
hack, and he see his chance. He rushes out and shouts: “A half a dollar
if you git me to the Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if
you do it in twenty minutes!”
“Done!” says the darky.
Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and
a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it
was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on
for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in
the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat’s feet was
on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he
couldn’t keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid
into his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and
made his legs fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop,
and so did the crowds along the street, for they could see his legs
spinning along under the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing
inside through the windows, and he was in awful danger; but the more
they all shouted the more the nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the
horses and shouted, “Don’t you fret, I’se gwine to git you dah in time,
boss; I’s gwine to do it, sho’!” for you see he thought they were all
hurrying him up, and, of course, he couldn’t hear anything for the
racket he was making. And so they went ripping along, and everybody
just petrified to see it; and when they got to the Capitol at last it
was the quickest trip that ever was made, and everybody said so. The
horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered out, and he was all
dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and just in time, and
caught the President and give him the letter, and everything was all
right, and the President give him a free pardon on the spot, and Nat
give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because he could see
that if he hadn’t had the hack he wouldn’t’a’ got there in time, nor
anywhere near it.
It _was_ a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his
bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.
Well, by and by Tom’s glory got to paling down gradu’ly, on account of
other things turning up for the people to talk about—first a
horse-race, and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the
circus, and on top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival,
same as it always does, and by that time there wasn’t any more talk
about Tom, so to speak, and you never see a person so sick and
disgusted.
Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day
out, and when I asked him what _was_ he in such a state about, he said
it ’most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him
getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making
a name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is
always thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say
it.
So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and
pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer
was always free and generous that way. There’s a-plenty of boys that’s
mighty good and friendly when _you’ve_ got a good thing, but when a
good thing happens to come their way they don’t say a word to you, and
try to hog it all. That warn’t ever Tom Sawyer’s way, I can say that
for him. There’s plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling
around you when you’ve got an apple and beg the core off of you; but
when they’ve got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you
give them a core one time, they say thank you ’most to death, but there
ain’t a-going to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with;
all you got to do is to wait.
Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it
was. It was a crusade.
[Illustration: “We went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us
what it was. It was a crusade.”]
“What’s a crusade?” I says.
He looked scornful, the way he’s always done when he was ashamed of a
person, and says:
“Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don’t know what a crusade is?”
“No,” says I, “I don’t. And I don’t care to, nuther. I’ve lived till
now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you
tell me, I’ll know, and that’s soon enough. I don’t see any use in
finding out things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn’t ever
have any occasion to use ’em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how
to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now,
then, what’s a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin;
if it’s a patent-right, there’s no money in it. Bill Thompson he—”
“Patent-right!” says he. “I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is
a kind of war.”
I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest,
and went right on, perfectly ca’m.
“A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim.”
“Which Holy Land?”
“Why, the Holy Land—there ain’t but one.”
“What do we want of it?”
“Why, can’t you understand? It’s in the hands of the paynim, and it’s
our duty to take it away from them.”
“How did we come to let them git hold of it?”
“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it. They always had it.”
“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”
“Why of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”
I studied over it, but couldn’t seem to git at the right of it, no way.
I says:
“It’s too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and
another person wanted it, would it be right for him to—”
“Oh, shucks! you don’t know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.
It ain’t a farm, it’s entirely different. You see, it’s like this. They
own the land, just the mere land, and that’s all they _do_ own; but it
was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they
haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame, and we
ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take
it away from them.”
“Why, it does seem to me it’s the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now,
if I had a farm and another person—”
“Don’t I tell you it hasn’t got anything to do with farming? Farming is
business, just common low-down business: that’s all it is, it’s all you
can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally
different.”
“Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?”
“Certainly; it’s always been considered so.”
Jim he shook his head, and says:
“Mars Tom, I reckon dey’s a mistake about it somers—dey mos’ sholy is.
I’s religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain’t
run across none dat acts like dat.”
It made Tom hot, and he says:
“Well, it’s enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance!
If either of you’d read anything about history, you’d know that Richard
Cur de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the
most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered
at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their
land away from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time—and yet
here’s a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of
Missouri setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs
of it than they did! Talk about cheek!”
Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim
felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn’t been quite so
chipper. I couldn’t say nothing, and Jim he couldn’t for a while; then
he says:
“Well, den, I reckon it’s all right; beca’se ef dey didn’t know, dey
ain’t no use for po’ ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en
so, ef it’s our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes’ we can.
Same time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part
gwine to be to kill folks dat a body hain’t been ’quainted wid and dat
hain’t done him no harm. Dat’s it, you see. Ef we wuz to go ’mongst
’em, jist we three, en say we’s hungry, en ast ’em for a bite to eat,
why, maybe dey’s jist like yuther people. Don’t you reckon dey is? Why,
_dey’d_ give it, I know dey would, en den—”
“Then what?”
“Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain’t no use, we _can’t_ kill
dem po’ strangers dat ain’t doin’ us no harm, till we’ve had practice—I
knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom—’deed I knows it perfectly well. But
ef we takes a’ axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de
river to-night arter de moon’s gone down, en kills dat sick fam’ly
dat’s over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en—”
“Oh, you make me tired!” says Tom. “I don’t want to argue any more with
people like you and Huck Finn, that’s always wandering from the
subject, and ain’t got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing
that’s pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!”
Now that’s just where Tom Sawyer warn’t fair. Jim didn’t mean no harm,
and I didn’t mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and
we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the _how_ of it, and
that was all; and the only reason he couldn’t explain it so we could
understand it was because we was ignorant—yes, and pretty dull, too, I
ain’t denying that; but, land! that ain’t no crime, I should think.
But he wouldn’t hear no more about it—just said if we had tackled the
thing in the proper spirit, he would ’a’ raised a couple of thousand
knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a
lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed
the whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across
the world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn’t know enough to
take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn’t ever offer it again.
And he didn’t. When he once got set, you couldn’t budge him.
But I didn’t care much. I am peaceable, and don’t get up rows with
people that ain’t doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was
satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.
Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott’s book, which he was
always reading. And it _was_ a wild notion, because in my opinion he
never could’ve raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he
would’ve got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near
as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go
crusading had a mighty rocky time of it.