We slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind
a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She
had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as
thirty men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and
an open camp-fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.
There was a power of style about her. It _amounted_ to something being
a raftsman on such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and
got hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on
both sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We
talked about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got
to it. I said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't
but about a dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them
lit up, how was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if
the two big rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said
maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and coming
into the same old river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too. So the
question was, what to do? I said, paddle ashore the first time a light
showed, and tell them pap was behind, coming along with a
trading-scow, and was a green hand at the business, and wanted to know
how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was a good idea, so we took a
smoke on it and waited.

There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and
not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it,
because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every
little while he jumps up and says:

"Dah she is?"

But it warn't. It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning-bugs; so he set
down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him
all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can
tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,
because I begun to get it through my head that he _was_ most free--and
who was to blame for it? Why, _me_. I couldn't get that out of my
conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't
rest; I couldn't stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to
me before, what this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and
it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out
to myself that _I_ warn't to blame, because _I_ didn't run Jim off
from his rightful owner; but it warn't no use, conscience up and says,
every time, "But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you
could 'a' paddled ashore and told somebody." That was so--I couldn't
get around that no way. That was where it pinched. Conscience says to
me, "What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her
nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word?
What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so
mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you
your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how.
_That's_ what she done."

I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I
fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was
fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still.
Every time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo!" it went through
me like a shot, and I thought if it _was_ Cairo I reckoned I would die
of miserableness.

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was
saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free state he
would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he
got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to
where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two
children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an
Ab'litionist to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk
such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in
him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the
old saying, "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I,
this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I
had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and
saying he would steal his children--children that belonged to a man I
didn't even know; a man that hadn't ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My
conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I
says to it, "Let up on me--it ain't too late yet--I'll paddle ashore
at the first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a
feather right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out
sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one
showed. Jim sings out:

"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels! Dat's de
good ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!"

I says:

"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know."

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom
for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he
says:

"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on
accounts o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it
hadn' ben for Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck;
you's de bes' fren' Jim's ever had; en you's de _only_ fren' ole Jim's
got now."

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says
this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along
slow then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I
started or whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:

"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep'
his promise to ole Jim."

Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I _got_ to do it--I can't get
_out_ of it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with
guns, and they stopped and I stopped. One of them says:

"What's that yonder?"

"A piece of a raft," I says.

"Do you belong on it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Any men on it?"

"Only one, sir."

"Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head
of the bend. Is your man white or black?"

I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I
tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't
man enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I
just give up trying, and up and says:

"He's white."

"I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves."

"I wish you would," says I, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe
you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick--and
so is mam and Mary Ann."

"Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. But I s'pose we've got to.
Come, buckle to your paddle, and let's get along."

I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a
stroke or two, I says:

"Pap 'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Everybody
goes away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't
do it by myself."

"Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter
with your father?"

"It's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much."

They stopped pulling. It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft
now. One says:

"Boy, that's a lie. What _is_ the matter with your pap? Answer up
square now, and it 'll be the better for you."

"I will, sir, I will, honest--but don't leave us, please. It's
the--the--Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you
the headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do."

"Set her back, John, set her back!" says one. They backed water. "Keep
away, boy--keep to looard. Confound it, I just expect the wind has
blowed it to us. Your pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious
well. Why didn't you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all
over?"

"Well," says I, a-blubbering, "I've told everybody before, and they
just went away and left us."

"Poor devil, there's something in that. We are right down sorry for
you, but we--well, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. Look
here, I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself, or
you'll smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty
miles, and you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river.
It will be long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell
them your folks are all down with chills and fever. Don't be a fool
again, and let people guess what is the matter. Now we're trying to do
you a kindness; so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good
boy. It wouldn't do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's
only a wood-yard. Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to
say he's in pretty hard luck. Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold
piece on this board, and you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty
mean to leave you; but my kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox,
don't you see?"

"Hold on, Parker," says the man, "here's a twenty to put on the board
for me. Good-by, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll be all
right."

"That's so, my boy--good-by, good-bye. If you see any runaway niggers
you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it."

"Good-by, sir," says I; "I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I
can help it."

They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because
I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me
to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get _started_ right
when he's little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't
nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.
Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd 'a'
done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do
now? No, says I, I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now.
Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right when it's
troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the
wages is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I
reckoned I wouldn't bother no more about it, but after this always do
whichever come handiest at the time.

I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there. I looked all around; he
warn't anywhere. I says:

"Jim!"

"Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o' sight yit? Don't talk loud."

He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I
told him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. He says:

"I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was
gwyne to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to
de raf' agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck!
Dat _wuz_ de smartes' dodge! I tell you, chile, I 'spec it save' ole
Jim--ole Jim ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey."

Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise--twenty
dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat
now, and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free
states. He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he
wished we was already there.

Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about
hiding the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles,
and getting all ready to quit rafting.

That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away
down in a left-hand bend.

I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out
in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line. I ranged up and says:

"Mister, is that town Cairo?"

"Cairo? no. You must be a blame' fool."

"What town is it, mister?"

"If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here botherin'
around me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you
won't want."

I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never
mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned.

We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but
it was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim
said. I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable
close to the left-hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did
Jim. I says:

"Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night."

He says:

"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I
awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work."

"I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid
eyes on it."

"It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn't know. Don't you blame yo'self
'bout it."

When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure
enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy! So it was all up with
Cairo.

We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore; we
couldn't take the raft up the stream, of course. There warn't no way
but to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the
chances. So we slept all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to
be fresh for the work, and when we went back to the raft about dark
the canoe was gone!

We didn't say a word for a good while. There warn't anything to say.
We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the
rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it? It would only
look like we was finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more
bad luck--and keep on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep
still.

By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no
way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to
buy a canoe to go back in. We warn't going to borrow it when there
warn't anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people
after us.

So we shoved out after dark on the raft.

Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a
snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe
it now if they read on and see what more it done for us.

The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we
didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and
more. Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next
meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you
can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then
along comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern, and judged
she would see it. Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us;
they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the
reefs; but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the
whole river.

We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she
was close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see
how close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites
off a sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and
thinks he's mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was
going to try and shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a
bit. She was a big one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking
like a black cloud with rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a
sudden she bulged out, big and scary, with a long row of wide-open
furnace doors shining like red-hot teeth, and her monstrous bows and
guards hanging right over us. There was a yell at us, and a jingling
of bells to stop the engines, a powwow of cussing, and whistling of
steam--and as Jim went overboard on one side and I on the other, she
come smashing straight through the raft.

I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel
had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could
always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a
minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was
nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of
my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current; and
of course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she
stopped them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was
churning along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though
I could hear her.

I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer;
so I grabbed a plank that touched me while I was "treading water," and
struck out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see
that the drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which
meant that I was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way.

It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so I was a
good long time in getting over. I made a safe landing, and clumb up
the bank. I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along
over rough ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run
across a big old-fashioned double log house before I noticed it. I was
going to rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went
to howling and barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another
peg.

In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his
head out, and says:

"Be done, boys! Who's there?"

I says:

"It's me."

"Who's me?"

"George Jackson, sir."

"What do you want?"

"I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs
won't let me."

"What are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?"

"I warn't prowling around, sir; I fell overboard off of the
steamboat."

"Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you
say your name was?"

"George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy."

"Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody
'll hurt you. But don't try to budge; stand right where you are. Rouse
out Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is
there anybody with you?"

"No, sir, nobody."

I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light.
The man sung out: "Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool--ain't
you got any sense? Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if
you and Tom are ready, take your places."

"All ready."

"Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?"

"No, sir; I never heard of them."

"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all ready. Step forward,
George Jackson. And mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow. If
there's anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll
be shot. Come along now. Come slow; push the door open yourself--just
enough to squeeze in, d'you hear?"

I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a-wanted to. I took one slow step at
a time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart.
The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little
behind me. When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them
unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and
pushed it a little and a little more till somebody said, "There,
that's enough--put your head in." I done it, but I judged they would
take it off.

The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me,
and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: Three big men with
guns pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray
and about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and
handsome--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two
young women which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says:

"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in."

As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it
and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and
they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor,
and got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front
windows--there warn't none on the side. They held the candle, and took
a good look at me, and all said, "Why, _he_ ain't a Shepherdson--no,
there ain't any Shepherdson about him." Then the old man said he hoped
I wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no
harm by it--it was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my
pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all
right. He told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about
myself; but the old lady says:

"Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't
you reckon it may be he's hungry?"

"True for you, Rachel--I forgot."

So the old lady says:

"Betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him
something to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls
go and wake up Buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself. Buck, take
this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress
him up in some of yours that's dry."

Buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there,
though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a
shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed. He came in gaping and digging
one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other
one. He says:

"Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?"

They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.

"Well," he says, "if they'd 'a' ben some, I reckon I'd 'a' got one."

They all laughed, and Bob says:

"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming."

"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. I'm always kept down;
I don't get no show."

"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show
enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with you
now, and do as your mother told you."

When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he
asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to
tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods
day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle
went out. I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no
way.

"Well, guess," he says.

"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it
before?"

"But you can guess, can't you?  It's just as easy."

"_Which_ candle?" I says.

"Why, any candle," he says.

"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"

"Why, he was in the _dark_! That's where he was!"

"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"

"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you
going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming
times--they don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a
dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.
Do you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You
bet I don't, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches! I
reckon I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm. Are
you all ready? All right. Come along, old hoss."

Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what
they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever
I've come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob
pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young
women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young
women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They
all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the
family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and
my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no
more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and
Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap
left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his
troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm
didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell
overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could
have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight
and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I
waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was.
So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up
I says:

"Can you spell, Buck?"

"Yes," he says.

"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

"All right," says I, "go ahead."

"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now," he says.

"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't
no slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying."

I set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it
next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was
used to it. It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too.
I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and
had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor
a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the
same as houses in town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign
of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a
big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept
clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another
brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they
call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass
dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on the
middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the
bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it
for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was
beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these
peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape,
she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got
tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock,
made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the
parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other;
and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their
mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeaked through
underneath. There was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out
behind those things. On the table in the middle of the room was a kind
of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches
and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and
prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see
where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or
whatever it was, underneath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and
blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It
come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books,
too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a
big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a
man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it
now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was
Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I
didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another
was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if
a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn-book, and a lot of other
books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound,
too--not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls--mainly Washingtons and
Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing
the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one
of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only
fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see
before--blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim
black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a
cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel
bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with
black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was
leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping
willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white
handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall
I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her
hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there
in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a
handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand
with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never
Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas."  There was one where a young lady
was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her
cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing-wax
showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain
to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art
Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I
reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I
was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was
sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures
to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost.
But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time
in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest
picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her
prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got
the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown,
standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair
all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running
down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two
arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up toward the
moon--and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then
scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before
she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head
of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung
flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young
woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so
many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to
paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it
out of the Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of
her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a
boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was
drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

    And did young Stephen sicken,
    And did young Stephen die?
    And did the sad hearts thicken,
    And did the mourners cry?

    No; such was not the fate of
    Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
    Though sad hearts round him thickened,
    'Twas not from sickness' shots.

    No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
    Nor measles drear with spots;
    Not these impaired the sacred name
    Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

    Despised love struck not with woe
    That head of curly knots,
    Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
    Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

    O no. Then list with tearful eye,
    Whilst I his fate do tell.
    His soul did from this cold world fly
    By falling down a well.

    They got him out and emptied him;
    Alas it was too late;
    His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
    In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could 'a' done by and by.
Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever
have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she
couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and
slap down another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could
write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it
was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died,
she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called
them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then
Emmeline, then the undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of
Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead
person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after
that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live
long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little
room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read
in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on
her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't
going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about
all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that
there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so I
tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make
it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the
things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was
alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room
herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a
good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains
on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with
vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a
little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing
was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is
Broken" and play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the
rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole
house was whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed
and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of
the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be
better. And warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!

Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all
over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and
that's worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow
Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first
aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he
warn't no more quality than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was
very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign
of red in it anywheres; he was clean-shaved every morning all over his
thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind
of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest
kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking
out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his
hair was gray and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was
long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a
full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your
eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass
buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it.
There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever
loud. He was as kind as he could be--you could feel that, you know,
and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to
see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the
lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to
climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He
didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners--everybody was
always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have him around,
too; he was sunshine most always--I mean he made it seem like good
weather. When he turned into a cloud-bank it was awful dark for half a
minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for
a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got
up out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn't set down
again till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard
where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to
him, and he held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was
mixed, and then they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and
madam"; and _they_ bowed the least bit in the world and said thank
you, and so they drank, all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful
of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple-brandy in the
bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and we drank to
the old people too.

Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,
like her father. She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too. My nigger
had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be
more--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such
junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the
woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six
families--mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned
and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat-landing, which
was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there
with a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there
on their fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a
horse coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:

"Quick! Jump for the woods!"

We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty
soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his
horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his
pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I
heard Buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from
his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we
was hid. But we didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run.
The woods warn't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the
bullet, and twice I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he
rode away the way he come--to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't
see. We never stopped running till we got home. The old gentleman's
eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure, mainly, I judged--then his face
sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle:

"I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step
into the road, my boy?"

"The Shepherdsons don't, father. They always take advantage."

Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was
telling his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The
two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she
turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man warn't
hurt.

Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:

"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"

"Well, I bet I did."

"What did he do to you?"

"Him? He never done nothing to me."

"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"

"Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud."

"What's a feud?"

"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"

"Never heard of it before--tell me about it."

"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with
another man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills _him_;
then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the
_cousins_ chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there
ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."

"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"

"Well, I should _reckon!_ It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along
there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the
man that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody
would."

"What was the trouble about. Buck?--land?"

"I reckon maybe--I don't know."

"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford Shepherdson?"

"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."

"Don't anybody know?"

"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but
they don't know now what the row was about in the first place."

"Has there been many killed, Buck?"

"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's
got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh
much, anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been
hurt once or twice."

"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?"

"Yes; we got one and they got one. 'Bout three months ago my cousin
Bud, fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side
of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame'
foolishness, and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind
him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun
in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of
jumping off and taking to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could outrun him;
so they had it, nip and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man
a-gaining all the time; so at last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he
stopped and faced around so as to have the bullet-holes in front, you
know, and the old man he rode up and shot him down. But he didn't git
much chance to enjoy his luck, for inside of a week our folks laid
_him_ out."

"I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck."

"I reckon he _warn't_ a coward. Not by a blame' sight. There ain't a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons--not a one. And there ain't no
cowards amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep' up his
end in a fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords,
and come out winner. They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse
and got behind a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to
stop the bullets; but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and
capered around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered
away at them. Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and
crippled, but the Grangerfords had to be _fetched_ home--and one of
'em was dead, and another died the next day. No, sir; if a body's out
hunting for cowards he don't want to fool away any time amongst them
Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that _kind_."

Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them
between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The
Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching--all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was
a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to
me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and
a dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went
up to our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that
sweet Miss Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and
she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I
liked her, and I said I did; and she asked me if I would do something
for her and not tell anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she'd
forgot her Testament, and left it in the seat at church between two
other books, and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to
her, and not say nothing to nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and
slipped off up the road, and there warn't anybody at the church,
except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and
hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you
notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a
hog is different.

Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with "_Half past two_" wrote on it with a
pencil. I ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. I couldn't
make anything out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and
when I got home and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting
for me. She pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the
Testament till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she
looked glad; and before a body could think she grabbed me and give me
a squeeze, and said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell
anybody. She was mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes
lighted up, and it made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal
astonished, but when I got my breath I asked her what the paper was
about, and she asked me if I had read it, and I said no, and she asked
me if I could read writing, and I told her "no, only coarse-hand," and
then she said the paper warn't anything but a book-mark to keep her
place, and I might go and play now.

I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty
soon I noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was
out of sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then
comes a-running, and says:

"Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole
stack o' water-moccasins."

Thinks I, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter
know a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for
them. What is he up to, anyway? So I says:

"All right; trot ahead."

I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle-deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat
piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and
vines, and he says:

"You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey
is. I's seed 'm befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'."

Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees
hid him. I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch
as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying
there asleep--and, by jings, it was my old Jim!

I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to
him to see me again, but it warn't. He nearly cried he was so glad,
but he warn't surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and
heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want
nobody to pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again. Says he:

"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considerable
ways behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could
ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I
see dat house I begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey
say to you--I wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet ag'in I
knowed you's in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for
day. Early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de
fields, en dey tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track
me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night,
en tells me how you's a-gittin' along."

"Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?"

"Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do
sumfn--but we's all right now. I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles,
as I got a chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--"

"_What_ raft, Jim?"

"Our ole raf'."

"You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?"

"No, she warn't. She was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but
dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. Ef we
hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn't ben
so dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de
sayin' is, we'd a seed de raf'. But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase
now she's all fixed up ag'in mos' as good as new, en we's got a new
lot o' stuff, in de place o' what 'uz los'."

"Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim--did you catch her?"

"How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No; some er de niggers
foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a
crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um
she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups
en settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv 'um,
but to you en me; en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white
genlman's propaty, en git a hid'n for it? Den I gin 'm ten cents
apiece, en dey 'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud
come along en make 'm rich ag'in. Dey's mighty good to me, dese
niggers is, en whatever I wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm
twice, honey. Dat Jack's a good nigger, en pooty smart."

"Yes, he is. He ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens _he_ ain't
mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be
the truth."

I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it
pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and
go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be
anybody stirring. That warn't usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up
and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs--nobody
around; everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks
I, what does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack, and
says:

"What's it all about?"

Says he:

"Don't you know, Mars Jawge?"

"No," says I, "I don't."

"Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she has. She run off in de
night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married
to dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec. De
fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' I
_tell_ you dey warn't no time los'. Sich another hurryin' up guns en
hosses _you_ never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de
river road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin
git acrost de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty
rough times."

"Buck went off 'thout waking me up."

"Well, I reck'n he _did!_ Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars
Buck he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a
Shepherdson or bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en
you bet you he'll fetch one ef he gits a chanst."

I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off. When I came in sight of the log store and
the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees
and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the
forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a
wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first
I was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn't.

There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the
open place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to
get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside
of the steamboat-landing; but they couldn't come it. Every time one of
them showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at.
The two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could
watch both ways.

By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and
started to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys
started on the run. They got half-way to the tree I was in before the
men noticed. Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and
took out after them. They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no
good, the boys had too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was
in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, and so they had the
bulge on the men again. One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a
slim young chap about nineteen years old.

The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to
make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful
surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men
come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or
other--wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I
dasn't come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and
his cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this
day yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two
or three of the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush.
Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their
relations--the Shepherdsons was too strong for them. I asked him what
was become of young Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they'd got across
the river and was safe. I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take
on because he didn't manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him--I
hain't ever heard anything like it.

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men
had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without
their horses! The boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as
they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them
and singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick I most
fell out of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell _all_ that happened--it
would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever
come ashore that night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get
shut of them--lots of times I dream about them.

I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up
my mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned
I was to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that
Miss Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half past two and run
off; and I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the
curious way she acted, and then maybe he would 'a' locked her up, and
this awful mess wouldn't ever happened.

When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river-bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces,
and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me.

It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn't on his island, so I
tramped off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows,
red-hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was
gone! My souls, but I was scared! I couldn't get my breath for most a
minute. Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me
says:

"Good lan'! is dat you, honey? Doan' make no noise."

It was Jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along
the bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me,
he was so glad to see me. He says:

"Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead ag'in. Jack's
been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home
no mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a-startin' startin' de raf' down
towards de mouf er de crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en
leave soon as Jack comes ag'in en tells me for certain you _is_ dead.
Lawsy, I's mighty glad to git you back ag'in, honey."

I says:

"All right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think
I've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up
there that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, Jim, but
just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can."

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in
the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk,
and pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so
good when it's cooked right--and whilst I eat my supper we talked and
had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and
so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home
like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and
smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and
comfortable on a raft.

Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum
by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we
put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a
mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes;
soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly
always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young
cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out
the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to
freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where
the water was about knee-deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a
sound anywheres--perfectly still--just like the whole world was
asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first
thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull
line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing
else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading
around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any
more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so
far away--trading-scows, and such things; and long black
streaks--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or
jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and
by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of
the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks
on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl
up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you
make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on
t'other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and piled by
them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice
breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and
fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but
sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around,
gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the
full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just
going it!

A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off
of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would
watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by
and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done
it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off
towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only
whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour
there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see--just solid
lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and
maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on
a raft; you'd see the ax flash and come down--you don't hear nothing;
you see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head
then you hear the _k'chunk!_--it had took all that time to come over
the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to
the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things
that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over
them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and
cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of
them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that
way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

"No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'"

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the
middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted
her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and
talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night,
whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes Buck's folks
made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go
much on clothes, nohow.

Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest
time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and
maybe a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on
the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know;
and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of
them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there,
all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up
at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just
happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I
judged it would have took too long to _make_ so many. Jim said the
moon could 'a' _laid_ them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I
didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as
many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that
fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled
and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in
the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up
out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look
awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink
out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by
and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and
joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for
you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or
three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows.
These sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant
morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right
away.

One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to
the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a
mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get
some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath
crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as
tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever
anybody was after anybody I judged it was _me_--or maybe Jim. I was
about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to
me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives--said they
hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was
men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got
time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways;
then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that 'll
throw the dogs off the scent."

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead,
and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away
off, shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but
couldn't see them; they seemed to stop and fool around awhile; then,
as we got further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly
hear them at all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us
and struck the river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the
towhead and hid in the cottonwoods and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head
and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a
greasy blue woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. He
had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung
over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking
carpet-bags.

The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come
out was that these chaps didn't know one another.

"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.

"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the
teeth--and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with
it--but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just
in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side
of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you
to get off. So I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would
scatter out _with_ you. That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?"

"Well, I'd ben a-runnin' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a
week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was
makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin' as
much as five or six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and
niggers free--and business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or
another a little report got around last night that I had a way of
puttin' in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me
out this mornin', and told me the people was getherin' on the quiet
with their dogs and horses, and they'd be along pretty soon and give
me 'bout half an hour's start, and then run me down if they could; and
if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure.
I didn't wait for no breakfast--I warn't hungry."

"Old man," said the young one, "I reckon we might double-team it
together; what do you think?"

"I ain't undisposed. What's your line--mainly?"

"Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines;
theater-actor--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and
phrenology when there's a chance; teach singing-geography school for a
change; sling a lecture sometimes--oh, I do lots of things--most
anything that comes handy, so it ain't work. What's your lay?"

"I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o'
hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and
I k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find
out the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin'
camp-meetin's, and missionaryin' around."

Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh
and says:

"Alas!"

"What 're you alassin' about?" says the baldhead.

"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be
degraded down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of
his eye with a rag.

"Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the
baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.

"Yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who
fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame
_you_, gentlemen--far from it; I don't blame anybody. I deserve it
all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a
grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it's always done,
and take everything from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it
can't take that. Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and
my poor broken heart will be at rest." He went on a-wiping.

"Drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you
heaving your pore broken heart at _us_ f'r? _We_ hain't done nothing."

"No, I know you haven't. I ain't blaming you, gentlemen. I
brought myself down--yes, I did it myself. It's right I should
suffer--perfectly right--I don't make any moan."

"Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?"

"Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it
pass--'tis no matter. The secret of my birth--"

"The secret of your birth! Do you mean to say--"

"Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to
you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!"

Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.
Then the baldhead says: "No! you can't mean it?"

"Yes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater,
fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the
pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own
father dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke
seized the titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored. I am
the lineal descendant of that infant--I am the rightful Duke of
Bridgewater; and here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted
of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heartbroken, and
degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!"

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him,
but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if
we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than
most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He
said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say "Your Grace," or
"My Lord," or "Your Lordship"--and he wouldn't mind it if we called
him plain "Bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a
name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little
thing for him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood
around and waited on him, and says, "Will yo' Grace have some o' dis
or some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty
pleasing to him.

But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say,
and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was
going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind.
So, along in the afternoon, he says:

"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm nation sorry for you, but you
ain't the only person that's had troubles like that."

"No?"

"No, you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down
wrongfully out'n a high place."

"Alas!"

"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." And,
by jings, _he_ begins to cry.

"Hold!  What do you mean?"

"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?" says the old man, still sort of
sobbing.

"To the bitter death!" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed
it, and says, "That secret of your being: speak!"

"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!"

You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:

"You are what?"

"Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very
moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of
Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette."

"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must
be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."

"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has
brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen,
you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled,
trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France."

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what
to do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us,
too. So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to
comfort _him._ But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead
and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often
made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him
according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and
always called him "Your Majesty," and waited on him first at meals,
and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me
set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him,
and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps
of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of
soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was
going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the
duke's great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a
good deal thought of by _his_ father, and was allowed to come to the
palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by
and by the king says:

"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer
raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll
only make things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a
duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to
worry? Make the best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my
motto. This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and
an easy life--come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends."

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took
away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it,
because it would 'a' been a miserable business to have any
unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a
raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind
towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no
kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best
way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.
If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no
objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't
no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing
else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind
of people is to let them have their own way.

They asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we
covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead
of running--was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I:

"Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run _south?_"

No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so
I says:

"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born,
and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed
he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little
one-horse place on the river forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was
pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't
nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn't
enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other
way. Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he
ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans
on it. Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard
corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under
the wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was
only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next
day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always
coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they
believed he was a runaway nigger. We don't run daytimes no more now;
nights they don't bother us."

The duke says:

"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to. I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan that 'll fix
it. We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to
go by that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy."

Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the
heat-lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the
leaves was beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was
easy to see that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our
wigwam, to see what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick--better
than Jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around
about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you
roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of
dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke
allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. He
says:

"I should 'a' reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you
that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your
Grace 'll take the shuck bed yourself."

Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was
going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when
the duke says:

"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of
oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I
submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world--let me suffer; I can
bear it."

We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand
well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we
got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch
of lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a
half a mile out, all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below
we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to
rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king
told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him
and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It
was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't 'a' turned in anyway if
I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day
in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream
along! And every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the
white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking
dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind;
then comes a _h-whack!_--bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and
the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and then
_rip_ comes another flash and another sock-dolager. The waves most
washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and
didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning
was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them
plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them.

I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that
time, so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he
was always mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam,
but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there
warn't no show for me; so I laid outside--I didn't mind the rain,
because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high now. About
two they come up again, though, and Jim was going to call me; but he
changed his mind, because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to
do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a
sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard. It most
killed Jim a-laughing. He was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever
was, anyway.

I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by
the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that
showed I rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding-quarters
for the day.

The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him
and the duke played seven-up awhile, five cents a game. Then they got
tired of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they
called it. The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a
lot of little printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said,
"The celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on
the Science of Phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day
of blank, at ten cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at
twenty-five cents apiece." The duke said that was _him._ In another
bill he was the "world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the
Younger, of Drury Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other
names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold
with a "divining-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and
by he says:

"But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the
boards, Royalty?"

"No," says the king.

"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur,"
says the duke. "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and
do the swordfight in 'Richard III.' and the balcony scene in 'Romeo
and Juliet.' How does that strike you?"

"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but,
you see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen
much of it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace.
Do you reckon you can learn me?"

"Easy!"

"All right. I'm jist a-freezin' for something fresh, anyway. Le's
commence right away."

So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was,
and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.

"But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white
whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe."

"No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the
difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight
before she goes to bed, and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled
nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts."

He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was
meedyevil armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white
cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was
satisfied; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the
most splendid spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same
time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the
king and told him to get his part by heart.

There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to
run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he
would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he
would go, too, and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of
coffee, so Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get
some.

When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or
too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in
the woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work
that camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.

The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a
little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter-shop--carpenters and
printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty,
littered-up place, and had ink-marks, and handbills with pictures of
horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed
his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for
the camp-meeting.

We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a
most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from
twenty mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched
everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off
the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with
branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles
of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they
was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of
outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive
sticks into for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had
high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on
sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones,
and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was
barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but
just a tow-linen shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some
of the young folks was courting on the sly.

The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,
there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then
he lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. The people woke up
more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some
begun to groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to
preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side
of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the
front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and
shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he
would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around
this way and that, shouting, "It's the brazen serpent in the
wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And people would shout out,
"Glory!--A-a-_men_!" And so he went on, and the people groaning and
crying and saying amen:

"Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (_amen!_)
come, sick and sore! (_amen!_) come, lame and halt and blind!
(_amen!_) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (_a-a-men!_) come, all
that's worn and soiled and suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come
with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters
that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and
be at rest!" (_a-a-men! glory, glory hallelujah!_)

And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the
crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners'
bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the
mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung
and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and
wild.

Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up onto the platform, and
the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He
told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the
Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in
a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to
goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat
without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing
that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy
for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to
start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in
the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path;
for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all
pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time
to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time
he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "Don't you thank me, don't
you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville
camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that
dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!"

And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody
sings out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" Well,
a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let
_him_ pass the hat around!" Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his
eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for
being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little
while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their
cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to
remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and
kissed as many as five or six times--and he was invited to stay a
week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said
they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of
the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat
to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.

When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had
collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had
fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a
wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take
it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the
missionarying line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

The duke was thinking _he'd_ been doing pretty well till the king
come to show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He
had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that
printing-office--horse bills--and took the money, four dollars. And he
had got in ten dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which
he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in
advance--so they done it. The price of the paper was two dollars a
year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on
condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in
cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the
concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and
was going to run it for cash. He set up a little piece of poetry,
which he made, himself, out of his own head--three verses--kind of
sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold world, this
breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to print in the
paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in nine dollars
and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work for it.

Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged
for, because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with
a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. The
reading was all about Jim and just described him to a dot. It said he
run away from St. Jacques's plantation, forty mile below New Orleans,
last winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and
send him back he could have the reward and expenses.

"Now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we
want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot
with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say
we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a
steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and
are going down to get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look
still better on Jim, but it wouldn't go well with the story of us
being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing--we
must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards."

We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no
trouble about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough
that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the
duke's work in the printing-office was going to make in that little
town; then we could boom right along if we wanted to.

We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten
o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't
hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

"Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis
trip?"

"No," I says, "I reckon not."

"Well," says he, "dat's all right, den. I doan' mine one er two kings,
but dat's enough. Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much
better."

I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could
hear what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so
long, and had so much trouble, he'd forgot it.

As Jim and Huck float downriver, Jim restlessly searches the riverbank for the town of Cairo. Each time Jim mentions how soon he will be free, Huck feels increasingly guilty. Huck knows that helping Jim escape is breaking the law, but Jim is also his friend. Thus, Huck is trapped in a difficult moral dilemma. After a great deal of reasoning, Huck realizes he will feel possibly even worse if he turned Jim into the authorities, and decides it would be best to let him escape. Huck makes this decision spontaneously, when heading to shore to determine what town they are near and with the intention of reporting Jim. On his way to shore, Huck meets two white men searching for runaway slaves. The men ask him who else is on his raft and rather than telling them about Jim, Huck tells them his Pa, mother, and sister are aboard. Huck pretends to be eager for their help and tells them no one else has been willing to pull the raft to shore. At this news, the men become suspicious and finally conclude that Huck's family must have smallpox. Each man then puts a twenty dollar coin on a log and floats it over to Huck to avoid any interaction with him, but only after making him promise not to land anywhere near their town. Huck's ingenious lie fools the men and saves Jim from capture. Huck and Jim are thrilled to have received so much extra money, which is enough for several trips up the river. They continue watching for Cairo, but are unable to locate it. After several days, both Huck and Jim begin to suspect that they passed Cairo in the fog several nights prior. The next night, Huck and Jim start to plan to use the canoe to paddle upriver. However, the canoe disappears, forcing them to continue downriver in hopes of buying a new canoe. While drifting downstream, they encounter an oncoming steamboat. Instead of getting out of their way as the steamboats usually do, the boat ploughs directly over the raft. Both Huck and Jim are forced to dive overboard. Huck emerges and grabs a piece of wood with which he paddles to the shore. Jim is nowhere to be seen. Huck is soon surrounded by dogs and stands dripping wet and immobilized. Chapter 17 Huck knows better than to run when surrounded by dogs, and stands stock still. Within a few moments, a man calls out to him from the house telling him to be still. After several of the men in the house prepare their rifles, Huck is allowed to approach. He cautiously enters the house and when the family sees him, they immediately become friendly. Huck has happened upon the Grangerford household, which is in a drawn out and violent feud with the nearby Shepherdson family. When the Grangerfords recognize that Huck is no relation to the Shepherdsons, they welcome him with open arms. Huck tells the family that he is an orphan named George Jackson from down south who has lost everything, and arrived at their home after falling off of a steamboat. The Grangerfords offer him a place in their home and he agrees to stay. The youngest son, Buck, is near to Huck's age and they soon become good friends. As Huck grows acclimated to his new home, he learns that the family had a younger daughter named Emmeline who passed away several years earlier. She was a talented poet and painter, and concentrated her work on eulogies for the dead. Huck thinks Emmeline's poetry is very beautiful and wishes that he could compose some lines devoted to Emmeline, but is unable to come up with anything. The family is quite wealthy considering their location. They own a fairly large house with nice furnishings and even have intellectual books in the parlor. Huck is happy to stay there, especially when he discovers their wonderful cooking. Chapter 18 Huck introduces the reader to most of the Grangerford family. The father of the house is Colonel Grangerford, whom Huck describes as a powerful, well-respected and honored man. The family owns a considerable amount of land and over one hundred slaves, including a slave for each member of the household. The two eldest sons are Tom and Bob, and the youngest is Buck, with whom Huck becomes friends. There are two daughters: Miss Charlotte, who bears herself like her father, and Miss Sophia, who is timid and kind. While out hunting one day, Huck and Buck hear a horse approaching behind them. Quickly, they run behind a bush and wait to see who arrives. Harvey Shepherdson passes by and Buck takes a shot at him, knocking off his hat. Harvey then follows the two boys into the woods but is unable to catch them. At this point, Buck explains the family feud to Huck. For over thirty years, the men in each family have been committed to killing off the men in the opposing family. No one remembers why the feud started, but several men have been killed each year. When the Grangerfords attend church, all the men carry guns with them, and ironically listen to preaching about brotherly love. After the service and once they have all returned home, Miss Sophia pulls Huck aside and urgently asks him to return to the church and fetch her Testament, which she accidentally left there. Huck does as he is asked and finds the book, but also sees a note that has been slipped into it which reads, "half past two." Huck returns the Testament to Sophia, and promises that he did not read the note. When Huck goes outside, he realizes that his personal slave is following him very closely, which is unusual. The slave offers to show him some water moccasins, an offer which he had extended the day before as well. Huck realizes that the slave is speaking to him in some kind of code and that something else is going on. Huck agrees to follow him and in the swamp is surprised to find Jim asleep on the ground. Jim has the raft, which he completely repaired, and is waiting for Huck to rejoin him so they can continue their trip downriver. The next day Miss Sophia elopes with Harvey Shepherdson, and the feud is rekindled in full force. Buck's father and both his brothers are killed in an ambush, and Huck arrives at the harbor in time to see Buck and his cousin shooting at five grown men. Eventually the men manage to sneak around Buck and kill both the boys while Huck watches from a tree that he climbed in an attempt to find safety. Once the Shepherdsons have left, Huck pulls Buck and the other boy out of the river and onto dry land where he weeps and covers their faces. Huck runs back to the house and sees that it is quite silent in the wake of the family tragedy. He goes to the swamp, finds Jim, who is glad to see that Huck lived through the massacre, and together they push the raft into the river and start floating downstream. Chapter 19 Huck and Jim continue down the river for a few days, enjoying the fresh air and warm breezes. Huck finds a canoe and uses it to paddle up a stream about a mile in search of berries. Two men come running through the woods and beg him for help. Huck makes them cover their tracks and then all three paddle back to the river. The two men are humbugs and frauds who were running away from townspeople who meant to tar and feather them. One man is about seventy and balding, and the other is in his thirties. The younger man specializes in printing and theater while the older man often "works" camp revivals. The younger man then tells them that he is actually the direct descendent of the Duke of Bridgewater and therefore is a Duke. Both Huck and Jim start to treat him as royalty and cater to his every need. This makes the older man jealous and so he then tells them that he is the Dauphin, or Louis the XVII. Huck and Jim treat both men as aristocracy, although Huck comments that it is pretty obvious neither is true royalty. Chapter 20 Huck explains to the King and Duke that he is a farmer's son who has lost his father and brother. He tells them that Jim is the last slave the family owns and that he is traveling south to Orleans to live with his Uncle Ben. Huck also says that he and Jim travel at night because they keep getting harassed by people who think Jim is a runaway slave. The Duke tells him that he will figure out a way for them to travel during the daytime. That night, the Duke and King take over Huck and Jim's beds. A large storm causes the river to become choppy, and Huck watches for danger. Soon Jim takes over and Huck falls asleep until he is washed overboard by a large wave. Jim bursts out laughing at the sight of Huck flailing about in the water. The next day, the King and Duke brainstorm money making schemes. The Duke decides that they should put on a play where they perform short scenes from Shakespeare and the King agrees. After dinner, they go into a nearby town to see what luck will bring them. The men find the town deserted, as everyone has gone to a revival meeting. The Duke breaks into a printer's shop and takes orders from some farmers. He collects cash and promises to print advertisements in the paper. In his final project, he makes a handbill showing a runaway slave and describing Jim. He tells the others that this handbill will make it seem as if they are taking Jim back to collect the reward. The King goes to the revival meeting with Huck and chances upon a crowd being listening to the preacher. The people get inflamed with the spirit of repentance, and in the middle of all their crying and yelling, the King jumps up onto the stage. He tells the audience that he was once a pirate in the Indian Ocean and that their meeting made him regret the actions of his former life. The King says that he would return to the Indian Ocean to convert his former colleagues, if only he had the money to do so. Immediately, a collection is taken up and the King leaves with over eighty-seven dollars.

These chapters focus on social commentary of the people and places along the Southern Mississippi. Each chapter introduces new characters and adventures that highlight particular prejudices or follies. Huck is also forced to play different roles as he tries to assimilate himself into each new situation. Through each of Huck's roles, the reader receives new insight into his personality and character. Twain offers social commentary in three separate escapades in the novel. First, two slave-hunters approach Huck's raft and Huck makes them believe his smallpox ridden family is aboard. Desperate to avoid the plague, each man forks over $20 just to keep the raft away from town. While disease is a valid concern, Twain demonstrates the fear with which people treat other sick people who need assistance and support. Rather than offering to help, the two men try to buy off the family and send them elsewhere. Second, the Grangerford and Shepherdson families participate in a violent, tragic feud. In fact, the happenings reflect a modern day Romeo and Juliet theme, as a Grangerford daughter and Shepherdson son elope, causing a familial massacre. Ironically, the two lovers are the only ones that survive. Huck explains how civilized, wealthy and respected the Grangerford family is, but then shatters this image by detailing the feud's excessive and tragic killings. Here, Twain demonstrates the utter stupidity of even the most educated and respected families, who can destroy themselves through nonsensical behavior and excessive pride. The last escapade in occurs when the King bilks an entire congregation out of money. His story about being a pirate and wishing to convert his brethren is laughable and silly, but at the revival meeting, everyone is so overcome by the love of God and their fellow man that they believe him and donate to his cause. With this anecdote, Twain is commenting on the gullibility of religious zealots, which is consistent with his attack on religion in the very first pages of the novel, when Huck decides that praying and heaven as described by Miss Watson as lousy alternatives to having fun. Twain's view of religion is lucidly set forth in this and other novels, and he tends to express that devotion to religion is simply a waste of time. Throughout these chapters, Huck consistently assumes different characters and roles in order to survive and to protect Jim. At the Grangerfords, he pretends to be an orphan, to the slave-hunters he pretends to be an innocent boy living with a sick family, and to the Duke and Dauphin, he pretends to be an orphan traveling with his only slave. Each of these roles provides great insight into Huck's personality. When Buck is killed, Huck is deeply affected by the entire tragedy and even admits to crying upon pulling his friend's dead body out of the river. He wishes that he had not played a role in causing the death of so many people, and, at the same time, realizes how foolish the feud is. Remarkably, Huck constantly pretends to be less intelligent or less capable than he really is. It is easy to forget that he is only a boy of fourteen when he and Jim are floating down the river together. But, when they meet other people, Huck's interactions are always at a lower, less mature level. For instance, he tells the slave-hunters he is too weak to drag the raft ashore by himself, when in reality he has handled the raft alone many times. When he and Buck are together, he shows far more maturity than Buck, evidenced by his restraint in matters concerning the feud. Tom Sawyer also comes across as a young child in comparison to Huck's common sense approach to life. Huck's interaction with the Duke and the King is at first puzzling and later annoying. He and Jim both are quite aware that the two men are con artists, forcing the reader to question why they put up with them. In fact, Huck is afraid of the consequences of crossing either man. He compares the men to Pap and remarks, "I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way." Thus, Huck and Jim realize that rather then stir up trouble with either of the men, it is best to play along and pretend they have been duped. Jim is unhappy with the situation, commenting at the end of Chapter 20 that he would prefer it if no more kings arrived during the trip. Huck seems to be considering a way out of the situation, but is unable to come up with a good plan. Partially, Huck enjoys watching the two men at work, since their actions create more of an adventure for him.