TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
Still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another
errand. Most of the professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in
the new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When
you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be
particular and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would
drop down into the lion market and see how we could make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the
reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it
and hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub
tiger. We had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they
would ’a’ took a hand in the proceedings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the
rest overboard. Then we baited some of the professor’s hooks with the
fresh meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don’t want nothing better than that.
[Illustration: “We catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see.”]
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn’t a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
feather-duster. It was a pa’m-tree, of course; anybody knows a
pa’m-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts
in this one, but there warn’t none. There was only big loose bunches of
things like oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because
he said they answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the
other books. Of course they mightn’t be, and they might be poison; so
we had to wait a spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They
done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good.
By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead
animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion
that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion
drove the bird away, it didn’t do no good; he was back again the minute
the lion was busy.
The big birds come out of every part of the sky—you could make them out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn’t see them
with your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn’t find out the meat was
there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain’t
that an eye for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of
dead lions couldn’t look any bigger than a person’s finger-nail, and he
couldn’t imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far
off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn’t kin. But Jim said that didn’t make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn’t eat his own father, if he knowed which
was him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was
uncommon hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But _reckoning_
don’t settle nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that
don’t fetch you to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop.
Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was
music. A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom
allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas;
and all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They
made a picture in the moonlight that was more different than any
picture I ever see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a
tree, and didn’t stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was
up two or three times to look down at the animals and hear the music.
It was like having a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I
hadn’t ever had before, and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make
the most of it; I mightn’t ever have such a chance again.
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all
day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see
that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts
for dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but couldn’t, it was
too lovely.
The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward,
we looked back and watched that place till it warn’t nothing but just a
speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a
friend that you ain’t ever going to see any more.
Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says:
“Mars Tom, we’s mos’ to de end er de Desert now, I speck.”
“Why?”
“Well, hit stan’ to reason we is. You knows how long we’s been
a-skimmin’ over it. Mus’ be mos’ out o’ san’. Hit’s a wonder to me dat
it’s hilt out as long as it has.”
“Shucks, there’s plenty sand, you needn’t worry.”
“Oh, I ain’t a-worryin’, Mars Tom, only wonderin’, dat’s all. De Lord’s
got plenty san’, I ain’t doubtin’ dat; but nemmine, He ain’t gwyne to
_was’e_ it jist on dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert’s plenty big
enough now, jist de way she is, en you can’t spread her out no mo’
’dout was’in’ san’.”
“Oh, go ’long! we ain’t much more than fairly _started_ across this
Desert yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain’t it? Ain’t
it, Huck?”
“Yes,” I says, “there ain’t no bigger one, I don’t reckon.”
“Well,” he says, “this Desert is about the shape of the United States,
and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would
cover the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There’d be a
little corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and
Florida sticking out like a turtle’s tail, and that’s all. We’ve took
California away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part
of the Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down
with her edge on the Pacific, she would cover the United States and
stick out past New York six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean.”
I say:
“Good land! have you got the documents for that, Tom Sawyer?”
“Yes, and they’re right here, and I’ve been studying them. You can look
for yourself. From New York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end
of the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains
3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the
Desert’s bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States,
and in under where the edges projected out, you could tuck England,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you
could hide the home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of
sight under the Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square
miles of sand left.”
“Well,” I says, “it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord
took as much pains makin’ this Desert as makin’ the United States and
all them other countries.”
Jim says: “Huck, dat don’ stan’ to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa’n’t
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis—you look at it, and
see ef I’s right. What’s a desert good for? ’Taint good for nuthin’.
Dey ain’t no way to make it pay. Hain’t dat so, Huck?”
“Yes, I reckon.”
“Hain’t it so, Mars Tom?”
“I guess so. Go on.”
“Ef a thing ain’t no good, it’s made in vain, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“_Now_, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat.”
“Well—no, He don’t.”
“Den how come He make a desert?”
“Well, go on. How _did_ He come to make it?”
“Mars Tom, I b’lieve it uz jes like when you’s buildin’ a house; dey’s
allays a lot o’ truck en rubbish lef’ over. What does you do wid it?
Doan’ you take en k’yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot?
’Course. Now, den, it’s my opinion hit was jes like dat—dat de Great
Sahara warn’t made at all, she jes _happen_’.”
I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one
Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about
arguments is, they ain’t nothing but _theories_, after all, and
theories don’t prove nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a
spell, when you are tuckered out butting around and around trying to
find out something there ain’t no way _to_ find out. And he says:
“There’s another trouble about theories: there’s always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It’s just so with this one
of Jim’s. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does
it come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left
over? How does it come there ain’t no sand-pile up there?”
But Jim was fixed for him and says:
“What’s de Milky Way?—dat’s what I want to know. What’s de Milky Way?
Answer me dat!”
In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It’s only an opinion, it’s
only _my_ opinion and others may think different; but I said it then
and I stand to it now—it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it
landed Tom Sawyer. He couldn’t say a word. He had that stunned look of
a person that’s been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said
was, as for people like me and Jim, he’d just as soon have intellectual
intercourse with a catfish. But anybody can say that—and I notice they
always do, when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was
tired of that end of the subject.
So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t’other thing, the more
nobler and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so,
hunting among the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the
same size as the Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the
Empire of China made on the map, and the room she took up in the world.
Well, it was wonderful to think of, and I says:
“Why, I’ve heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
knowed before how important she was.”
Then Tom says:
“Important! Sahara important! That’s just the way with some people. If
a thing’s big, it’s important. That’s all the sense they’ve got. All
they can see is _size_. Why, look at England. It’s the most important
country in the world; and yet you could put it in China’s vest-pocket;
and not only that, but you’d have the dickens’s own time to find it
again the next time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all
around and everywhere, and yet ain’t no more important in this world
than Rhode Island is, and hasn’t got half as much in it that’s worth
saving.”
Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of
the world. Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much
excited, and took a look, and says:
“That’s it—it’s the one I’ve been looking for, sure. If I’m right, it’s
the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the
treasures.”
So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.