Well, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with
such a gang as that! But it warn't no time to be sentimentering. We'd
_got_ to find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves. So we went
a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was,
too--seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim
said he didn't believe he could go any farther--so scared he hadn't
hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left
on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck
for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along
forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the
edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the
cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely
see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would 'a' been
aboard of her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his
head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was
gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:

"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!" He flung a bag of
something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. It was
Packard. Then Bill _he_ come out and got in. Packard says, in a low
voice:

"All ready--shove off!"

I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill
says:

"Hold on--'d you go through him?"

"No. Didn't you?"

"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet."

"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money."

"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?"

"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along."

So they got out and went in.

The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half
second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with
my knife and cut the rope, and away we went!

We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly
even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip
of the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we
was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up,
every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern
show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed
by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to
understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner
was.

Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the
first time that I begun to worry about the men--I reckon I hadn't had
time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for
murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no
telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how
would I like it?  So says I to Jim:

"The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above
it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff,
and then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to
go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung
when their time comes."

But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again,
and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light
showed; everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river,
watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the
rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we
made for it.

It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We
seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would
go for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had
stole there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and
I told Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had
gone about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my
oars and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or  four
more showed--up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the
shore light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it
was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. I
skimmed around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and
by and by I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head
down between his knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little
shoves, and begun to cry.

He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was
only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:

"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?"

I says:

"Pap, and mam, and sis, and--"

Then I broke down. He says:

"Oh, dang it now, _don't_ take on so; we all has to have our troubles,
and this 'n 'll come out all right. What's the matter with 'em?"

"They're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?"

"Yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "I'm the captain
and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head
deck-hand; and sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as
rich as old Jim Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good
to Tom, Dick, and Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way
he does; but I've told him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places
with him; for, says I, a sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm
derned if _I'd_ live two mile out o' town, where there ain't nothing
ever goin' on, not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of
it. Says I--"

I broke in and says:

"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and--"

"_Who_ is?"

"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your
ferryboat and go up there--"

"Up where? Where are they?"

"On the wreck."

"What wreck?"

"Why, there ain't but one."

"What, you don't mean the _Walter Scott?"_

"Yes."

"Good land! what are they doin' _there_, for gracious sakes?"

"Well, they didn't go there a-purpose."

"I bet they didn't! Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em
if they don't git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they
ever git into such a scrape?"

"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--"

"Yes, Booth's Landing--go on."

"She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of
the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry
to stay all night at her friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-her--I
disremember her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung
around and went a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and
saddle-baggsed on the wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and
the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got
aboard the wreck. Well, about an hour after dark we come along down in
our trading-scow, and it was so dark we didn't notice the wreck till
we was right on it; and so _we_ saddle-baggsed; but all of us was
saved but Bill Whipple--and oh, he _was_ the best cretur!--I most wish
't it had been me, I do."

"My George! It's the beatenest thing I ever struck. And _then_ what
did you all do?"

"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't
make nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help
somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it,
and Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and
hunt up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a
mile below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to
do something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a
current? There ain't no sense in it; go for the steam-ferry.' Now if
you'll go and--"

"By Jackson, I'd _like_ to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will;
but who in the dingnation's a-going to _pay_ for it? Do you reckon
your pap--"

"Why _that's_ all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, _particular_, that
her uncle Hornback--"

"Great guns! is _he_ her uncle? Looky here, you break for that light
over yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a
quarter of a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you
out to Jim Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool
around any, because he'll want to know the news. Tell him I'll have
his niece all safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now; I'm
a-going up around the corner here to roust out my engineer."

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went
back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up
shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in
among some wood-boats; for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the
ferryboat start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther
comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for
not many would 'a' done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I
judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions,
because rapscallions and dead-beats is the kind the widow and good
people takes the most interest in.

Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along
down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for
her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance
for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a
little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. I felt a little
bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they
could stand it I could.

Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river
on a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach
I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the
wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her
uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat
give it up and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went
a-booming down the river.

It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up; and
when it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the
time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the
east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the
skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people.

Huck and Jim head for the robbers' boat. The robbers put some stolen items in their boat but leave in order to take some more money from their victim inside the steamboat. Jim and Huck jump into the robbers' boat and head off as quietly as possible. When they are a few hundred yards away, Huck feels bad for the robbers left stranded on the wreck because, after all, he himself might end up a murderer someday. Huck and Jim find their raft and then stop so that Huck can go ashore to get help. Once on land, Huck finds a ferry watchman and tells him his family is stranded on the Walter Scott steamboat wreck. Huck invents an elaborate story about how his family got on the wreck and convinces the watchman to take his ferry to help. Huck feels proud of his good deed and thinks the Widow Douglas would have approved of him helping the robbers because she often takes an interest in "rapscallions and dead beats. Jim and Huck sink the robbers' boat and then go to sleep. Meanwhile, the wreck of the Walter Scott drifts downstream and, although the ferryman has gone to investigate, the robbers clearly have not survived


We judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the
bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what
we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way
up the Ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a
towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when
I paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't
anything but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one
of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff
current, and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by
the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down, and it made
me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute it
seemed to me--and then there warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see
twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and
grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke. But she didn't come. I
was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her. I got up and tried to untie
her, but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do
anything with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy,
right down the towhead. That was all right as far as it went, but the
towhead warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of
it I shot out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which
way I was going than a dead man.

Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank
or a towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's
mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a
time. I whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres I hears a
small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it,
listening sharp to hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't
heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. And the next time
I was heading away to the left of it--and not gaining on it much
either, for I was flying around, this way and that and t'other, but it
was going straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the
time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops
that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly
I hears the whoop _behind_ me. I was tangled good now. That was
somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its
place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me
again, and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head
down-stream, and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other
raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for
nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed
me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly
roared, the current was tearing by them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set
perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I
didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was
an island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no
towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber
of a regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than
half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I
was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you
don't ever think of that. No, you _feel_ like you are laying dead
still on the water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you
don't think to yourself how fast _you're_ going, but you catch your
breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. If you think it
ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the
night, you try it once--you'll see.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears
the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do
it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had
little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a
narrow channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was
there because I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead
brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't long loosing
the whoops down amongst the towheads; and I only tried to chase them a
little while, anyway, because it was worse than chasing a
Jack-o'-lantern. You never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap
places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to
keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the
raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it
would get further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a
little faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't
hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a
snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I
laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't
want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help
it; so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars
was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a
big bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was
dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come
up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest
kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could
see by the stars. I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on
the water. I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but
a couple of saw-logs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and
chased that; then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.

When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his
knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. The
other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves
and branches and dirt. So she'd had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to
gap, and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says:

"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?"

"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead--you ain'
drownded--you's back ag'in? It's too good for true, honey, it's too
good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you
ain' dead! you's back ag'in, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck--de
same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!"

"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?"

"Drinkin'? Has I ben a-drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?"

"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?"

"How does I talk wild?"

"_How?_ Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all
that stuff, as if I'd been gone away?"

"Huck--Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. _Hain't_
you ben gone away?"

"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? _I_ hain't been gone
anywheres. Where would I go to?"

"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumfn wrong, dey is. Is I _me_, or who
_is_ I? Is I heah, or whah _is_ I? Now dat's what I wants to know."

"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a
tangle-headed old fool, Jim."

"I is, is I? Well, you answer me dis: Didn't you tote out de line in
de canoe fer to make fas' to de towhead?"

"No, I didn't. What towhead? I hain't seen no towhead."

"You hain't seen no towhead? Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en
de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in
de fog?"

"What fog?"

"Why, _de_ fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night. En didn't you
whoop, en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un
us got los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn'
know whah he wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en
have a turrible time en mos' git drownded?  Now ain' dat so,
boss--ain't it so? You answer me dat."

"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no
islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking
with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I
reckon I done the same. You couldn't 'a' got drunk in that time, so of
course you've been dreaming."

"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?"

"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it
happen."

"But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--"

"It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in
it. I know, because I've been here all the time."

Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying
over it. Then he says:

"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't
de powerfulest dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo'
dat's tired me like dis one."

"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like
everything sometimes. But this one was a staving dream; tell me all
about it, Jim."

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as
it happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must
start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said
the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good,
but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The
whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if
we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us
into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was
troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all
kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't talk
back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog
and into the big clear river, which was the free states, and wouldn't
have no more trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it
was clearing up again now.

"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,"
I says; "but what does _these_ things stand for?"

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You
could see them first-rate now.

Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash
again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he
couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place
again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he
looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:

"What do dey stan' for? I's gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz
mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become
er me en de raf'.  En when I wake up en fine you back ag'in, all safe
en soun', de tears come, en I could 'a' got down on my knees en kiss
yo' foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you
could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is _trash_; en
trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en
makes 'em ashamed."

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there
without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel
so mean I could almost kissed _his_ foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble
myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it
afterward, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I
wouldn't done that one if I'd 'a' knowed it would make him feel that
way.

Huck and Jim approach the Ohio River, their goal. One foggy night, Huck, in the canoe, gets separated from Jim and the raft. He tries to paddle back to the raft, but the fog is so thick that he loses all sense of direction. After a lonely time adrift, Huck reunites with Jim, who is asleep on the raft. Jim is thrilled to see Huck alive, but Huck tries to trick Jim by pretending that Jim dreamed up their entire separation. Jim tells Huck the story of his dream, making the fog and the troubles he faced on the raft into an allegory of their journey to the free states. But soon Jim notices all the debris, dirt, and tree branches that collected on the raft while it was adrift. He gets mad at Huck for making a fool of him after he had worried about him so much. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger," Huck says, but he eventually apologizes and does not regret it. He feels bad about hurting Jim

We see in these chapters that Huck, though open-minded, still largely subscribes to the Southern white conception of the world. When Jim assesses their "adventure," Huck does admit that he has acted foolishly and jeopardized Jim's safety, but he qualifies his assessment by adding that Jim is smart--for a black person. Huck also genuinely struggles with the question of whether or not to turn over Jim to the white men who ask if he is harboring any runaway slaves. In some sense, Huck still believes that turning Jim in would be the "right" thing to do, and he struggles with the idea that Miss Watson is a slave owner yet still seems to be a "good" person. Over the course of these chapters, as he spends more time with Jim, Huck is forced to question the facts that white society has taught him and that he has taken for granted. The arguments Huck and Jim have over Huck's stories provide remarkable mini-allegories about slavery and race. When Huck tells the tale of King Solomon, who threatened to chop a baby in half, Jim argues that Solomon had so many children that he became unable to value human life properly. Huck's comments lead us to compare Jim's assessment of Solomon with whites' treatments of blacks at the time--as infinitely replaceable bodies, indistinguishable from one another. Later, Huck tells Jim that people in France don't speak English. Huck tries to convince the skeptical Jim by pointing out that cats and cows don't "talk" the same, and that, by analogy, neither should French people and American people. Jim points out that both are men and that the analogy is inappropriate. Although Jim is misinformed in a sense, he is correct in his assessment of Huck's analogy. Jim's argument provides yet another subtle reminder that, in American society at the time, not all men are treated as men. Although Jim's discussion with Huck shows that both have clever minds, we see that Jim is less imprisoned by conventional wisdom than Huck, who has grown up at least partly in mainstream white society. We see the moral and societal importance of Huck and Jim's journey in Huck's profound moral crisis about whether he should return Jim to Miss Watson. In the viewpoint of Southern white society, Huck has effectively stolen $800--the price the slave trader has offered for Jim--from Miss Watson. However, Jim's comment that Huck is the only white man ever to keep his word to him shows that Huck has been treating Jim not as a slave but as a man. This newfound knowledge, along with Huck's guilt, keep Huck from turning Jim in. Huck realizes that he would have felt worse for doing the "right" thing and turning Jim in than he does for not turning Jim in. When Huck reaches this realization, he makes a decision to reject conventional morality in favor of what his conscience dictates. This decision represents a big step in Huck's development, as he realizes that his conscience may be a better guide than the dictates of the white society in which he has been raised.


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.

Jim and Huck worry that they will miss Cairo, the town at the mouth of the Ohio River, which runs into the free states. Meanwhile, Huck's conscience troubles him deeply about helping Jim escape from his "rightful owner," Miss Watson, especially after all she has done for Huck. Jim talks on and on about going to the free states, especially about his plan to earn money to buy the freedom of his wife and children. If their masters refuse to give up Jim's family, Jim plans to have some abolitionists kidnap them. When Huck and Jim think they see Cairo, Huck goes out on the canoe to check, having secretly resolved to give Jim up. But Huck's heart softens when he hears Jim call out that Huck is his only friend, the only one to keep a promise to him. Huck comes upon some men in a boat who want to search his raft for escaped slaves. Huck pretends to be grateful, saying no one else would help them. He leads the men to believe that his family is on board the raft and is suffering from smallpox. The men, fearing infection, back away and tell Huck to go further downstream and lie about his family's condition to get help. Out of pity, they leave Huck forty dollars in gold. Huck feels bad because he thinks he has done wrong in not giving Jim up. However, he realizes he would feel just as bad if he had given Jim up. Huck re solves to disregard morality in the future and do what's "handiest. Floating along, Huck and Jim pass several towns and worry that they have passed Cairo in the fog. They stop for the night and resolve to take the canoe upriver but in the morning discover that it has been stolen. They attribute the canoe's disappearance to continued bad luck from the snakeskin on Jackson's Island. Later, a steamboat collides with the raft, breaking it apart. Jim and Huck dive off in time but are separated. Huck makes it ashore, but a pack of dogs corners him


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!

A man calls off the dogs, saving Huck, who introduces himself as "George Jackson. The man invites "George" into his house, where the hosts express an odd suspicion that Huck is a member of a family called the Shepherdsons. Eventually, Huck's hosts decide that he is not a Shepherdson. The lady of the house tells Buck, a boy about Huck's age, to get Huck some dry clothes. Buck says he would have killed a Shepherdson had there been any Shepherdsons present. Buck tells Huck a riddle, but Huck does not understand the concept of riddles. Buck says Huck must stay with him and they will have great fun. Huck, meanwhile, invents an elaborate story to explain how he was orphaned. Buck's family, the Grangerfords, offer to let Huck stay with them for as long as he likes. Huck innocently admires the house and its humorously tacky finery, including the work of a deceased daughter, Emmeline, who created unintentionally funny sentimental artwork and poems about people who died. Settling in with the Grangerfords and enjoying their kindness, Huck thinks that "nothing couldn't be better" than life at the comfortable house

Huck's stay at the Grangerfords represents another instance of Twain poking fun at American tastes and at the conceits of romantic literature. For Huck, who has never really had a home aside from the Widow Douglas's rather spartan house, the Grangerford house looks like a palace. Huck's admiration is genuine but naive, for the Grangerfords and their place are somewhat absurd. In the figure of deceased Emmeline Grangerford, Twain pokes fun at Victorian literature's propensity for mourning and melancholy. Indeed, Emmeline's hilariously awful artwork and poems mock popular works of the time. The combination of overzealous bad taste and inherently sad subject matter in Emmeline's art is both bizarre and comical: as we learn, Emmeline was so enthusiastic in her artistic pursuits that she usually beat the undertaker to a new corpse. Huck, meanwhile, feels uneasy about the macabre aspect of Emmeline's work. His attempts to accept her art and life remind us that sometimes laughter is insensitive: Emmeline and her subjects were all real people who died, after all. The great Grangerford-Shepherdson feud is yet another conceit taken from romantic literature, specifically that literature's concern with family honor. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons are rather like Tom Sawyer grown up and armed with weapons: motivated by a sense of style and this ridiculous notion of family honor, they actually kill each other. However comical the feud is in general, though, Buck's death is a terrible moment, and Twain's tone turns entirely serious at this point. Before fleeing, Huck pulls Buck's body from the river and cries as he covers his friend's face. Twain uses this incident to comment on all systems of belief that deny another group of people their humanity. While this section of Huckleberry Finn is undeniably humorous, it also demonstrates how confused Huck's world is. Like so many other people Huck meets in the novel, the Grangerfords are a mix of contradictions: although they treat Huck well, they own slaves and behave more foolishly than almost anyone else in the novel. Jim's reemergence on the raft and the encounter with the duke and the dauphin illustrate the shifting power dynamics between blacks and whites as Huck and Jim move further down the river. Jim's use of Huck's whiteness to threaten his fellow black men shows how corrupting racism and the slave system can be. We should remember that although Jim acts maliciously, he does so to protect his own freedom, which makes it difficult to judge his actions harshly. Shortly afterward, the encounter with the duke and the dauphin reminds Huck and Jim of their relative powerlessness. Although the duke and the dauphin are criminals, they are free, adult, white men who have the power to turn in both Huck and Jim. Despite Huck's feeling that one is "mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft," the outside world and its evils remain a firmly established presence on the river. As Huck and Jim travel further, the Mississippi becomes a source of foreboding rather than freedom, a conduit toward the American "heart of darkness"--the plantations of the Deep South.


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.

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. Huck admires Colonel Grangerford, the master of the house, and his supposed gentility. A warmhearted man, the colonel owns a very large estate with over a hundred slaves. Everyone in the household treats the colonel with great courtesy. The Grangerford children include Bob, the oldest; then Tom; then Charlotte, age twenty-five; Sophia, age twenty; and finally Buck. All of them are beautiful. One day, Buck tries to shoot a young man named Harney Shepherdson but misses. Huck asks why Buck wanted to kill Harney, and Buck explains that the Grangerfords are in a feud with a neighboring clan of families, the Shepherdsons. No one can remember how or why the feud started, but in the last year, two people have been killed, including a fourteen-year-old Grangerford. The two families attend church together and hold their rifles between their knees as the minister preaches about brotherly love. After church one day, Sophia Grangerford has Huck retrieve a copy of the Bible from the pews. She is delighted to find inside a note with the words "Half-past two" written on it. Later, Huck's slave valet leads Huck deep into the swamp and tells Huck he wants to show him some water-moccasins. Huck finds Jim there, much to his surprise. Jim says that he followed Huck to the shore the night they were wrecked but did not dare call out for fear of being caught. Some slaves found the raft, but Jim reclaimed it by threatening the slaves and telling them that it belonged to his white master. The next day, Huck learns that Sophia Grangerford has run off with Harney Shepherdson. In the woods, Huck finds Buck and a nineteen-year-old Grangerford in a gunfight with the Shepherdsons. Both of the Grangerfords are killed. Deeply disturbed, Huck heads for Jim and the raft, and the two shove off downstream