STORM
And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there,
empty and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it
but just the waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and the
water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in
the dead center of it—plumb in the center. We was racing along like a
prairie fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn’t seem to git
past that center no way. I couldn’t see that we ever gained an inch on
that ring. It made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and
unaccountable.
Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very
low voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less
talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there
and “thunk,” as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time.
The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up
and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant
and he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he
ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on
again. He said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would
keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon,
and then he’d land in London.
[Illustration: “The professor said he would keep up this hundred-mile
gait till tomorrow”]
We said we would be humbly thankful.
He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give
us a long look of his blackest kind—one of the maliciousest and
suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says:
“You want to leave me. Don’t try to deny it.”
[Illustration: “You want to leave me. Don’t try to deny it.”]
We didn’t know what to say, so we held in and didn’t say nothing at
all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn’t seem to git that thing out of
his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and
try to make us answer him, but we dasn’t.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I
couldn’t stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By
and by Tom pinched me and whispers:
“Look!”
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a
bottle. I didn’t like the looks of that. By and by he took another
drink, and pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting
black and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the
thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the
ropes, and altogether it was awful. It got so black we couldn’t see him
any more, and wished we couldn’t hear him, but we could. Then he got
still; but he warn’t still ten minutes till we got suspicious, and
wished he would start up his noise again, so we could tell where he
was. By and by there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to
get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard him scream out in the
dark:
“They don’t want to go to England. All right, I’ll change the course.
They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall—and _now!_”
I ’most died when he said that. Then he was still again—still so long I
couldn’t bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn’t _ever_
come again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on
his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his
eyes was terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, “Overboard _you_
go!” but it was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn’t see whether he
got him or not, and Tom didn’t make a sound.
There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I
see Tom’s head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the
rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor
let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark
again, and Jim groaned out, “Po’ Mars Tom, he’s a goner!” and made a
jump for the professor, but the professor warn’t there.
Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so
loud, and then another that was ’way below, and you could only _just_
hear it; and I heard Jim say, “Po’ Mars Tom!”
Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could ’a’ counted four
thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his
knees, with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he
was crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again,
and I was glad, because I didn’t want to see. But when the next flash
come, I was watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the
wind on the ladder, and it was Tom!
“Come up!” I shouts; “come up, Tom!”
His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn’t make out what
he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:
“No, he’s down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?”
Of course, all this in the dark.
“Huck, who is you hollerin’ at?”
“I’m hollerin’ at Tom.”
“Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po’ Mars Tom—” Then he let
off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off
another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had
raised up his face just in time to see Tom’s, as white as snow, rise
above the gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom’s
ghost, you see.
Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it _was_ him, and not his ghost,
he hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on
like he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:
“What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn’t you come up at first?”
“I dasn’t, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn’t
know who it was in the dark. It could ’a’ been you, it could ’a’ been
Jim.”
That was the way with Tom Sawyer—always sound. He warn’t coming up till
he knowed where the professor was.
The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was
dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared
out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come
down. One second you couldn’t see your hand before you, and the next
you could count the threads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide
desert of waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A
storm like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain’t at its
best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it’s wet and lonesome,
and there’s just been a death in the family.
[Illustration: “The thunder boomed, and the lightning glared, and the
wind screamed in the rigging”]
We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor
professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had
made fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he
could, and hadn’t a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him
from brooding his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of
clothes and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought
we’d ruther take the rain than go meddling back there.