Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally
was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick-room, and if I found him
awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash.
But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not
fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I set down and laid for him
to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I
was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still, and set down by me,
and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all
the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so
long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one
he'd wake up in his right mind.
So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his
eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:
"Hello!--why, I'm at HOME! How's that? Where's the raft?"
"It's all right," I says.
"And JIM?"
"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never
noticed, but says:
"Good! Splendid! NOW we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"
I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "About what, Sid?"
"Why, about the way the whole thing was done."
"What whole thing?"
"Why, THE whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway
nigger free--me and Tom."
"Good land! Set the run--What IS the child talking about! Dear, dear,
out of his head again!"
"NO, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We DID
set him free--me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we DONE it. And we
done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never checked him up,
just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it
warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work
--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep.
And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your
dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan,
and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't
think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and
one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we
had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters
from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole
into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a
pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"
"Mercy sakes!"
"--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for
Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that
you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we
was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive
at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go
by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the
most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all
safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T
it bully, Aunty!"
"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU,
you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned
everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've
as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very
minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a--YOU just get
well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both
o' ye!"
But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his
tongue just WENT it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and
both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:
"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell
you if I catch you meddling with him again--"
"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.
"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"
Tom looks at me very grave, and says:
"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"
"HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've
got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and
water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!"
Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and
shutting like gills, and sings out to me:
"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!"
"What DOES the child mean?"
"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go.
I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson
died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him
down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will."
"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?"
"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I
wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to
--goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!"
If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!
Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried
over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it
was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in
a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there
looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the
earth, you know. And then she says:
"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."
"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM,
it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago."
"You mean where's Huck FINN--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE
him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed,
Huck Finn."
So I done it. But not feeling brash.
Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see
--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it
all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't
know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting
sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest
man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told
all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such
a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer--she chipped
in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and
'tain't no need to change"--that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I
had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't
mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an
adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out,
and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.
And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting
Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took
all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't
ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD
help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.
Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and
SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself:
"Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that
way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the
way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's
up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you
about it."
"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally.
"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean
by Sid being here."
"Well, I never got 'em, Sis."
Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:
"You, Tom!"
"Well--WHAT?" he says, kind of pettish.
"Don t you what ME, you impudent thing--hand out them letters."
"What letters?"
"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--"
"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they
was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if
you warn't in no hurry, I'd--"
"Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I
wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--"
"No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've
got that one."
I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it
was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.
CHAPTER THE LAST
THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time
of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all
right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before?
And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got
Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and
have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about
his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and
pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the
niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight
procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would
we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.
We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom,
they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him
all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him
up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars
for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim
was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:
"DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I
TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN; en it's come
true; en heah she is! DAH, now! doan' talk to ME--signs is SIGNS, mine I
tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's
a-stannin' heah dis minute!"
And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three
slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for
howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a
couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't
got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from
home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away
from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.
"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and
more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away,
anyhow."
Jim says, kind of solemn:
"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck."
I says:
"Why, Jim?"
"Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo."
But I kept at him; so at last he says:
"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a
man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you
come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat
wuz him."
Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard
for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't
nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a
knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and
ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the
Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me
and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
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