Chapter 09 (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

01CHAPTER IX.

02I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I'd found when I was exploring, so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide.

03This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high.

04We had a rough time getting to the top, and the sides were so steep and the bushes so thick.

05We tramped and clumbed around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top of the side, towards Illinois.

06The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it.

07It was cool and there.

08Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

09Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs.

10And besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet.

11So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there.

12Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows.

13We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and began to get ready for dinner.

14The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hog's head in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on.

15So we built it there, and cooked dinner.

16We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.

17We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.

18Pretty soon it darkened up, begun to thunder and lighten, so the birds was right about it.

19Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so.

20It was one of them regular summer storms.

21It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely, and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby, and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves, and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to toss in their arms as if they was just wild.

22And next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest, it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before, dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the underside of the world, like rolling empty barrels downstairs, where it's long stairs, and they bounce a good deal, you know.

23Jim, this is nice, I says.

24I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here.

25Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread.

26Well, you wouldn't have been here if it hadn't been for Jim.

27You'd have been down there in the woods without any dinner, and getting most drownded too.

28Dat you would, honey.

29Chickens know when it's gwine to rain, and so do the birds, chile.

30The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks.

31The water was three or four feet deep on the island in the low places, and on the Illinois bottom.

32On that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across, a half a mile, because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.

33Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe.

34It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.

35We went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way.

36Well, on every old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things, and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to, but not the snakes and turtles.

37They would slide off in the water.

38The ridge our cabin was in was full of them.

39We could have had pets enough if we'd wanted them.

40One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft, nice pine planks.

41It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above water six or seven inches, a solid level floor.

42We could see saw logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go.

43We didn't show ourselves in daylight.

44Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house down on the west side.

45She was a two-story and tilted over considerable.

46We paddled out and got aboard, clumb in in an upstairs window, but it was too dark to see yet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.

47The light began to come before we got to the foot of the island, then we looked in at the window.

48We could make out a bed and a table and two old chairs and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall.

49There was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man.

50So Jim says, Hello, you!

51But it didn't budge.

52So I hollered again, and then Jim says, Da man ain't asleep.

53He dead.

54You hold still.

55I'll go and see.

56He went and bent down and looked and says, It's a dead man.

57Yes, indeedy.

58Naked, too.

59He'd been shot in the back.

60I reckon he'd been dead two or three days.

61Come in, Huck, but don't look at his face.

62It's too gashly.

63I didn't look at him at all.

64Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't have done it.

65I didn't want to see him.

66There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered round over the floor, and old whiskey bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth, and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.

67There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun bonnet, and some woman's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too.

68We put the lot into the canoe.

69It might come good.

70There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor.

71I took that, too.

72And there was a bottle that had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck.

73We could have took the bottle, but it was broke.

74There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk where the hinges broke.

75They stood open, but there wa'nt nothing left in them that was any account.

76The way things was scattered about, we reckon the people left in a hurry, and wa'nt fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

77We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher knife without any handle, and a brand-new barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of towel-candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old bed-quilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on them, and just as we was leaving, I found a tolerable good currycomb, and Jim, he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg.

78The straps was broke off of it, but barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for me, and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all round.

79And so, take it all round, we made a good haul.

80When we was ready to shove off, we was a quarter mile below the island, and it was a pretty broad day, so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with a quilt, because if he set up, people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off.

81I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half a mile doing it.

82I crept up the dead water under the bank, and had no accidents, and didn't see nobody.

83We got home all safe.

84And a chapter.

85And a chapter.

86And a chapter.

87And a chapter.

88And a chapter.

89And a chapter.

90And a chapter.