Chapter 07 (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

01CHAPTER VII.

02Get up!

03What you about?

04I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was.

05It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep.

06Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too.

07He says, What you doing with his gun?

08I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says, Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.

09Why didn't you roust me out?

10Well, I tried to, but I couldn't.

11I couldn't budge you.

12Well, all right.

13Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast.

14I'll be along in a minute.

15He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank.

16I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark, so I knowed the river had begun to rise.

17I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town.

18The June rise used to be always luck for me, because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log-raths, sometimes a dozen logs together.

19So all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.

20I went along up the bank with one eye out for Pap, and the other one out for what the rise might fetch along.

21Well, all at once here comes a canoe, just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck.

22I shot headfirst off of the bank like a frog, closing all on, and struck out for the canoe.

23I just expected that'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it, they'd raise up and laugh at him.

24But it weren't so this time.

25It was a drift canoe, sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore.

26Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this, she's worth ten dollars.

27But when I'd got to shore Pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea.

28I judged I'd hide her good, and then, instead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot.

29It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time, but I got her hid, and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path apiece, just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun, so he hadn't seen anything.

30When he got along I was hard at it taking up a trot-line.

31He abused me a little for being so slow, but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me so long.

32I know'd he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions.

33We got five catfish off the lines, and went home.

34While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep Pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trust in the luck to get far enough off before they missed me.

35You see, all kinds of things might happen.

36Well, I didn't see no way for a while, but by and by Pap raises up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says, Another time a man comes prowling round here, you roust me out, do you hear?

37That man warn't here for no good.

38I'd have shot him.

39Next time you roust me out, you hear?

40Then he dropped down and went to sleep again.

41But what he had been saying gave me the very idea I wanted.

42I says to myself, I can fix it now so nobody won't think of following me.

43About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank.

44The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise.

45By and by along comes part of a log raft, nine logs fast together.

46We went out with a skiff and towed it ashore.

47Then we had dinner.

48Anybody but Pap would have waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff, but that warn't Pap's style.

49Nine logs was enough for one time, he must shove right over to town and sell.

50So he locked me in, took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three.

51I judged he wouldn't come back that night.

52I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start.

53Then I out with my saw and went to work on that log again.

54Before he was to the other side of the river, I was out of the hole.

55Him and his raft was just a speck on the water, way off yonder.

56I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was head, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in.

57Then I done the same with a side of bacon, then the whisky-jug.

58I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition.

59I took the wadding.

60I took the bucket and gourd.

61I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot.

62I took fish-lines and matches and other things, everything that was worth a cent.

63I cleaned out the place.

64I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out at the wood-pile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that.

65I fetched out the gun, and now I was done.

66I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and tracking out so many things, so I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness in the sawdust.

67Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two rocks under it, and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at that place, and didn't quite touch ground.

68If you stood four or five feet away and didn't know it was sawed, you would never notice it.

69And besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody would go fooling around there.

70It was all grass cleared to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track.

71I followed around to see.

72I stood on the bank and looked out over the river.

73All safe.

74So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig.

75Hogs soon went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms.

76I shot this fellow and took him into camp.

77I took the axe and smashed in the door.

78I beat it and hacked it considerable of doing it.

79I fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down on the ground to bleed.

80I say ground because it was ground, hard packed, no boards.

81Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in it, all like a drag.

82And I started it from the pig and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and down it sunk out of sight.

83You could easily see that something had been dragged over the ground.

84I did wish Tom Sawyer was there.

85I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy touches.

86Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.

87Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner.

88Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket, so he couldn't drip, till I got a good piece below the house, and then dumped him into the river.

89Now I thought of something else.

90So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house.

91I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there weren't no knives and forks on the place.

92Pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking.

93Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five miles wide and full of rushes, and ducks too, you might say, in the season.

94There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river.

95The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake.

96I dropped Pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident.

97Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.

98It was about dark now, so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise.

99I made fast to a willow, then I took a bite to eat, and by-and-by laid down in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan.

100I says to myself, they'll follow the track of that sack full of rocks to the shore, and then drag the river for me.

101And they'll follow that meal track to the lake, and go browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things.

102They won't ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass.

103They'll soon get tired of that, and won't bother no more about me.

104All right, I can stop anywhere I want to.

105Jackson's Island is good enough for me.

106I know that island pretty well.

107Nobody ever comes there.

108And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want.

109Jackson Island's the place.

110I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knewed I was asleep.

111When I woke up, I didn't know where I was for a minute.

112I sat up and looked around a little scared.

113Then I remembered.

114The river looked miles and miles across.

115The moon was so bright I could have counted the drift-logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore.

116Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelt late.

117You know what I mean.

118I don't know the words to put it in.

119I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start, when I heard a sound away over the water.

120I listened.

121Pretty soon I made it out.

122It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in road-locks when it's a still night.

123I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was, a skiff, away across the water.

124I couldn't tell how many was in it.

125It kept a-comin', and when it was abreast of me, I see there warn't but one man in it.

126Thinks I.

127Maybe it's Pap, though I warn't expectin' him.

128He dropped below me with the current, and by-and-by he come a-swingin' up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could have reached out the gun and touched him.

129Well, it was Pap, sure enough, and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.

130I didn't lose no time.

131The next minute I was a-spinnin' downstream, soft but quick, in the shade of the bank.

132I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passin' the ferry landin', and people might see me and hail me.

133I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe, and let her float.

134I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, lookin' away into the sky, not a cloud in it.

135The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine.

136I never knowed it before.

137And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!

138I heard people talkin' at the ferry landin'.

139I heard what they said, too, every word of it.

140One man said it was gettin' towards the long days and the short nights, now.

141T'other ones said this warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned, and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again.

142Then they waked up another fella and told him, and laughed.

143But he didn't laugh.

144He ripped out somethin' brisk, and said let him alone.

145The first fella said he allowed to tell it to his old woman.

146She would think it was pretty good.

147But he said that warn't nothin' to some things he had said in his time.

148I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer.

149After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more.

150But I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.

151I was away below the ferry now.

152I rose up, and there was Jackson's Island, about two mile and a half downstream, heavy-timbered, and standin' up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights.

153There warn't any signs of the bar at the head.

154It was all under water now.

155It didn't take me long to get there.

156I shot past the head at a rippin' rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water, and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.

157I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about.

158I had to part the willow branches to get in, and when I made fast nobody could have seen the canoe from the outside.

159I went up, and sat down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood, and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights a-twinklin'.

160A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile upstream, comin' along down, with a lantern in the middle of it.

161I watched it come creepin' down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood, I heard a man say, "'Stirn oars there!

162Heave her head to stabberd!' I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side.

163There was a little grey in the sky now, so I stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast.