Huckleberry Finn by Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (recommended books to read TXT) 📕

We killed a duck now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn’t go to bed early enough at night. Take it all around, we lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid wall. We stayed in the tent and let the raft take care of itself. When the lightning come out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high cliffs on both sides.

By and by says I, “Hello, Jim, look over there!” It was a river boat that had run up onto a rock. We was moving straight down on her. The lightning showed her very clearly. She was leaning over, with part of her top floor above water, and you could see every little chimney rope clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old soft hat hanging on the back of it, when the lightning come.

Well, it being away in the night with a storm and all, I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I seen that broken ship laying there so sad and all alone in the middle of the river. I wanted to get onto her and look around a little, and see what there was there.

So I says: “Let’s land on her, Jim.”

But Jim was dead against it at first. He says: “I don’t want to go playing around on some broken ship. We’s doing well enough, and we better let well enough alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey’s a watchman on dat ship.”

“Watchman your grandmother!” I says. “There ain’t nothing to watch but cabins and the steering room; and do you think anyone’s going to try to rob them on such a night as this, when it could break up and wash off down the river any minute?” Jim couldn’t say nothing to that, so he didn’t try.

“And what’s more,” I says, “we might borrow something worth having out of the cabin. Cigars maybe -- that cost five cents each, solid money. River boat drivers is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don’t care a cent what a thing costs, long as they want it. Put a candle in your pocket; I can’t rest, Jim, until we give her a look over. Do you think Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure -- that’s what he’d call it; and he’d land on that ship if it was his last act. And wouldn’t he make it special too? -- wouldn’t he put his whole being into it? Why, you’d think it was Christopher Columbus finding America. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.”

Jim he argued a little, but give in. He said we mustn’t talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us the ship again just in time, and we tied up to a hook on the right side of it.

Out there, the floor was pretty high. We went slowly down it to the left, in the dark, toward the steering room, feeling our way with our feet, and pushing our hands out to stop us from hitting the ropes, for it was so dark we couldn’t see no sign of them. Pretty soon we come to the forward end of the window in the roof of the steering room, and climbed on to it; and the next step brought us in front of the door to the top cabin, which was open, and true as anything, away down at the other end of the steering room we seen a light! and all in the same second we seemed to hear low voices down there!

Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come along. I says all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just then I heard a voice call out and say: “Oh, please don’t, boys; I promise I won’t ever tell!”

Another voice said, pretty loud: “It’s a lie, Jim Turner. You’ve acted this way before. You always want more than your part of the takings, and you’ve always got it, too, because you’ve promised if you didn’t get it you’d tell. But this time you’ve said it just one time too many. You’re the lowest, most two-faced dog in this country.”

By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just burning up with wanting to know what was happening; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now, and so I won’t either; I’m a-going to see what’s going on here. So I dropped down on my hands and knees in the narrow walkway, and moved forward in the dark until there weren’t but one cabin between me and where the room with the voices was at the end of the walkway. In there I could see a man lying on the floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a lantern in his hand, and the other one had a gun. This one kept pointing the gun at the man’s head on the floor, and saying:

“I’d like to! And I should, too -- you dirty skunk!”

The man on the floor would pull against the ropes and say, “Oh please don’t, Bill; I ain’t ever going to tell.”

Each time he said that the man with the gun would say: “It’s true you ain’t! You never said no truer thing than that, you can count on it.” And once he said: “Hear him beg! and yet if we hadn’t got the best of him and tied him he’d a killed us both. And what for? Just for nothing. Just because we stood on our rights -- that’s what for. But I know you ain’t a-going to be a danger to nobody any more, Jim Turner.”

And the other man says, “Put up that gun, Bill.”

Bill says: “I don’t want to, Jake Packard. I’m for killing him -- and didn’t he kill old Hatfield just the same way -- and ain’t it right that he gets the same thing?”

“But I don’t want him killed, and I’ve got my reasons for it.”

“Bless your heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forget you long as I live!” says the man on the floor, in a crying like voice.

Packard didn’t take no interest in that, but hanged up his lantern on a nail and started toward where I was there in the dark, and moved his hand to show that he wanted Bill to come. I moved back as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat leaned so that I couldn’t make very good time; so to keep from getting run over and caught I moved into a cabin on the high side. The man came a-feeling along in the dark, and when Packard got to my cabin, he says: “Here -- come in here.”

And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in the top bed, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the side of the bed, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whiskey they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whiskey; but it wouldn’t a made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a found me because I didn’t breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body couldn’t breathe and hear such talk. They talked low and serious. Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says: “He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give all that both of us have to him now it wouldn’t make no difference after the fight and the way we’ve done him. Sure as you’re born, he’ll turn and help the police; now you hear me. I’m for putting him out of his troubles.”

“So am I,” says Packard, very quiet.

“Well, I’ll be... I’d started to think you wasn’t. Well, then, that’s all right. Let’s go and do it.”

“Hold on a minute; I ain’t had my say yet. You listen to me. Shooting’s good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s got to be done. What I say is this: it ain’t good thinking to go doing something with a rope around you if you can get at what you’re up to in some way that’s just as good and at the same time don’t bring no new problems into the action. Ain’t that so?”

“Too right it is. But how you going to do it this time?”

“Well, my plan is this: we’ll look around and bring together whatever things we’ve missed in the cabins, and push off for the other side of the river and hide the takings. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-going to be more than two hours before this old ship breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drowned, and won’t have nobody to go to prison for it but himself. I say that’s a good measure better than killing him. I don’t feel good about killing a man as long as you can get around it; it ain’t wise, it ain’t right in the eyes of God. Ain’t I right?”

“Yes, I think you are. But what if she don’t break up and wash off?”

“Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can’t we?”

“All right, then; come along.”

So they started back to their prisoner, and I left after them, scared half to death, and climbed forward. It was dark as tar up there; but I said, in a kind of rough whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with something like a groan, and I says:

“Hurry, Jim, it ain’t no time for playing around and groaning; there’s a gang of killers back there, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and cut it loose so these boys can’t get away from this ship there’s one of them going to be in a bad way. But if we find their boat we can put all of them in a bad way -- for the police will get them. Fast -- hurry! I’ll hunt the right side, you hunt the left. You start at the raft, and -- “

“Oh, my good lord! Raft? Dey ain’t no raft no more; she done broke loose and went -- and here we is!”

Chapter 13

Well, I caught my breath and almost fainted. Shut up on a dying ship with such a gang as that! But it weren’t no time to be feeling sorry for ourselves. We needed to find that boat now -- had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-shaking down the right side, and slow work it was, too -- seemed a week be- fore we got to the back of the ship. No sign of a boat.

Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any farther -- so scared he had almost no strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this ship we are in serious trouble, for sure. So on we went again. We headed for the back of the steering house, and found it, and then moved forward on the roof, hanging on from window to window, for the side of the roof was in the water.

When we got pretty close to the door to where the gang was, there was the boat, sure enough! I could just make her out in the darkness. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been into it, but just then the door opened. One of the men put his head out only about two foot from me,