THE SAND-STORM
We went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full
moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a
string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It
was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after
it, just to have company, though it warn’t going our way. It was a
rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning
when the sun come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long
shadders of the camels on the gold sand like a thousand
grand-daddy-long-legses marching in procession. We never went very near
it, because we knowed better now than to act like that and scare
people’s camels and break up their caravans. It was the gayest outfit
you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. Some of the chiefs rode
on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and they go
plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man that is
on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, I bet you,
but they make noble good time, and a camel ain’t nowheres with them for
speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to
look very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to
copper, and after that it begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the
air got hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened
up and looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful—like it looks
through a piece of red glass, you know. We looked down and see a big
confusion going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like
they was scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and
laid there perfectly still.
Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and
it was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck
us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against
our faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:
“It’s a sand-storm—turn your backs to it!”
[Illustration: “In the sand-storm”]
We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn’t see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we
was setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our
heads out and could hardly breathe.
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out
and looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn’t anything
but just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people
and camels was smothered and dead and buried—buried under ten foot of
sand, we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind
uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn’t ever know what
become of that caravan. Tom said:
“_Now_ we know what it was that happened to the people we got the
swords and pistols from.”
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn’t get at them, and the
wind never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and
warn’t fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor
people as a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was
mistaken; this last caravan’s death went harder with us, a good deal
harder. You see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to
feeling acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the
man that was watching the girl, but it was different with this last
caravan. We was huvvering around them a whole night and ’most a whole
day, and had got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. I
have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you
like people or hate them than to travel with them. Just so with these.
We kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them put on
the finisher. The longer we traveled with them, and the more we got
used to their ways, the better and better we liked them, and the
gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had come to know
some of them so well that we called them by name when we was talking
about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even dropped
the Miss and Mister and just used their plain names without any handle,
and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it
wasn’t their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander
Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler,
and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and
simmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as
soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn’t
Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more, but only Elleck, and Addy,
and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.
And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we
warn’t cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right
down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was
going, and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it
didn’t make no difference what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much home-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that
night, and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very
starchiest of the professor’s duds for the blow-out, and when they
danced we jined in and shook a foot up there.
[Illustration: “When they danced we joined in and shook a foot up
there”]
But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still
dawn. We didn’t know the diseased, and he warn’t in our set, but that
never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was
enough, and there warn’t no more sincerer tears shed over him than the
ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to
part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead
so long, anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of
them, too, and now to have death snatch them from right before our
faces while we was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in
the middle of that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we
mightn’t ever make any more friends on that voyage if we was going to
lose them again like that.
[Illustration: “The wedding procession”]
We couldn’t keep from talking about them, and they was all the time
coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we
was all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and
the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries
lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more
oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they
don’t allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several
times a day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the
east, and lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin,
and four or five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall
forward and touch their forehead to the ground.
Well, it warn’t good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it
didn’t do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was
going to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in
a better world; and Tom kept still and didn’t tell him they was only
Mohammedans; it warn’t no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad
enough just as it was.
When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and
had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest
bed there is, and I don’t see why people that can afford it don’t have
it more. And it’s terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon
so steady before.
Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do
with it; it was good sand, and it didn’t seem good sense to throw it
away. Jim says:
“Mars Tom, can’t we tote it back home en sell it? How long’ll it take?”
“Depends on the way we go.”
“Well, sah, she’s wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I
reckon we’s got as much as twenty loads, hain’t we? How much would dat
be?”
“Five dollars.”
“By jings, Mars Tom, le’s shove for home right on de spot! Hit’s more’n
a dollar en a half apiece, hain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ef dat ain’t makin’ money de easiest ever _I_ struck! She jes’
rained in—never cos’ us a lick o’ work. Le’s mosey right along, Mars
Tom.”
But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never
heard him. Pretty soon he says:
“Five dollars—sho! Look here, this sand’s worth—worth—why, it’s worth
no end of money.”
“How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!”
“Well, the minute people knows it’s genuwyne sand from the genuwyne
Desert of Sahara, they’ll just be in a perfect state of mind to git
hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it
for a curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float
around all over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents
apiece. We’ve got all of ten thousand dollars’ worth of sand in this
boat.”
Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout
whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:
“And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and
fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we’ve carted this
whole Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain’t ever going to
be any opposition, either, because we’ll take out a patent.”
“My goodness,” I says, “we’ll be as rich as Creosote, won’t we, Tom?”
“Yes—Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little
hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn’t know he was walking
over the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made
the driver.”
“Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?”
“Well, I don’t know yet. It’s got to be ciphered, and it ain’t the
easiest job to do, either, because it’s over four million square miles
of sand at ten cents a vial.”
Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook
his head and says:
“Mars Tom, we can’t ’ford all dem vials—a king couldn’t. We better not
try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us,
sho’.”
Tom’s excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account
of the vials, but it wasn’t. He set there thinking, and got bluer and
bluer, and at last he says:
“Boys, it won’t work; we got to give it up.”
“Why, Tom?”
“On account of the duties.”
I couldn’t make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:
“What _is_ our duty, Tom? Because if we can’t git around it, why can’t
we just _do_ it? People often has to.”
But he says:
“Oh, it ain’t that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you
strike a frontier—that’s the border of a country, you know—you find a
custom-house there, and the gov’ment officers comes and rummages among
your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it’s
their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don’t pay the duty
they’ll hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don’t
deceive nobody, it’s just hogging, and that’s all it is. Now if we try
to carry this sand home the way we’re pointed now, we got to climb
fences till we git tired—just frontier after frontier—Egypt, Arabia,
Hindostan, and so on, and they’ll all whack on a duty, and so you see,
easy enough, we _can’t_ go _that_ road.”
“Why, Tom,” I says, “we can sail right over their old frontiers; how
are _they_ going to stop us?”
He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:
“Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?”
I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went
on:
“Well, we’re shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we’ve
come, there’s the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of
them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we’ve got.”
“Why?”
“Well, they can’t raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when
they can’t raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand
per cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it.”
“There ain’t no sense in that, Tom Sawyer.”
“Who said there _was?_ What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn?
You wait till I say a thing’s got sense in it before you go to accusing
me of saying it.”
“All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on.”
Jim says:
“Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can’t raise in
America, en don’t make no ’stinction ’twix’ anything?”
“Yes, that’s what they do.”
“Mars Tom, ain’t de blessin’ o’ de Lord de mos’ valuable thing dey is?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Don’t de preacher stan’ up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?”
“Yes.”
“Whah do it come from?”
“From heaven.”
“Yassir! you’s jes’ right, ’deed you is, honey—it come from heaven, en
dat’s a foreign country. _Now_, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin’?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Course dey don’t; en so it stan’ to reason dat you’s mistaken, Mars
Tom. Dey wouldn’t put de tax on po’ truck like san’, dat everybody
ain’t ’bleeged to have, en leave it off’n de bes’ thing dey is, which
nobody can’t git along widout.”
Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn’t budge.
He tried to wiggle out by saying they had _forgot_ to put on that tax,
but they’d be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and
then they’d put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed
it. He said there warn’t nothing foreign that warn’t taxed but just
that one, and so they couldn’t be consistent without taxing it, and to
be consistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that
they’d left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best
to fix it before they got caught and laughed at.
But I didn’t feel no more interest in such things, as long as we
couldn’t git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the
same. Tom he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another
speculation for us that would be just as good as this one and better,
but it didn’t do no good, we didn’t believe there was any as big as
this. It was mighty hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and
could ’a’ bought a country and started a kingdom and been celebrated
and happy, and now we was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand
left on our hands. The sand was looking so lovely before, just like
gold and di’monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so silky and
nice, but now I couldn’t bear the sight of it, it made me sick to look
at it, and I knowed I wouldn’t ever feel comfortable again till we got
shut of it, and I didn’t have it there no more to remind us of what we
had been and what we had got degraded down to. The others was feeling
the same way about it that I was. I knowed it, because they cheered up
so, the minute I says le’s throw this truck overboard.
Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so
Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and
him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths.
Jim he didn’t quite like that arrangement. He says:
“Course I’s de stronges’, en I’s willin’ to do a share accordin’, but
by jings you’s kinder pilin’ it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and
let’s see.”
So Jim reckoned it wouldn’t be no more than fair if me and Tom done a
_tenth_ apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and
then he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara
to the westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from.
Then he turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement,
and we was satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.
So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest
for Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference
there was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he
was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first
arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there
was more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.
Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had
to move up into cooler weather or we couldn’t ’a’ stood it. Me and Tom
took turn about, and one worked while t’other rested, but there warn’t
nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp,
he sweated so. We couldn’t work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim
he kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to
keep making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor
inventions, but they done well enough, Jim didn’t see through them. At
last when we got done we was ’most dead, but not with work but with
laughing. By and by Jim was ’most dead, too, but: it was with work;
then we took turns and spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could
be, and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant,
and say how good we was to a poor old nigger, and he wouldn’t ever
forgit us. He was always the gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any
little thing you done for him. He was only nigger outside; inside he
was as white as you be.