ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN Chapter-2

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN 

CHAPTER II.

WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of

the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our

heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a

noise.  We scrouched down and laid still.  Miss Watson's big nigger,

named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty

clear, because there was a light behind him.  He got up and stretched his

neck out about a minute, listening.  Then he says:

"Who dah?"

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right

between us; we could a touched him, nearly.  Well, likely it was minutes

and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close

together.  There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I

dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right

between my shoulders.  Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.  Well,

I've noticed that thing plenty times since.  If you are with the quality,

or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you

are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all

over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

"Say, who is you?  Whar is you?  Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n.

Well, I know what I's gwyne to do:  I's gwyne to set down here and listen

tell I hears it agin."

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.  He leaned his back up

against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched

one of mine.  My nose begun to itch.  It itched till the tears come into

my eyes.  But I dasn't scratch.  Then it begun to itch on the inside.

Next I got to itching underneath.  I didn't know how I was going to set

still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it

seemed a sight longer than that.  I was itching in eleven different

places now.  I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I

set my teeth hard and got ready to try.  Just then Jim begun to breathe

heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon comfortable

again.

Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we

went creeping away on our hands and knees.  When we was ten foot off Tom

whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun.  But I said

no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I

warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip

in the kitchen and get some more.  I didn't want him to try.  I said Jim

might wake up and come.  But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there

and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.

Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do

Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play

something on him.  I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was

so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,

and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of

the house.  Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on

a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.

Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance,

and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again,

and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.  And next time Jim told

it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time

he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode

him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all

over saddle-boils.  Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he

wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers.  Niggers would come miles to

hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in

that country.  Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and

look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.  Niggers is always talking

about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was

talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in

and say, "Hm!  What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked

up and had to take a back seat.  Jim always kept that five-center piece

round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to

him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and

fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but

he never told what it was he said to it.  Niggers would come from all

around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that

five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had

his hands on it.  Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck

up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down

into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where

there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so

fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and

awful still and grand.  We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben

Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard.  So we

unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the

big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the

secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest

part of the bushes.  Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands

and knees.  We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up.

Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall

where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole.  We went along a

narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold,

and there we stopped.  Tom says:

"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.

Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name

in blood."

Everybody was willing.  So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote

the oath on, and read it.  It swore every boy to stick to the band, and

never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in

the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family

must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed

them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band.

And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he

did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed.  And if

anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his

throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered

all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never

mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot

forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it

out of his own head.  He said, some of it, but the rest was out of

pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the

secrets.  Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it

in. Then Ben Rogers says:

"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout

him?"

"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.

"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days.  He

used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen

in these parts for a year or more."

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said

every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be

fair and square for the others.  Well, nobody could think of anything to

do--everybody was stumped, and set still.  I was most ready to cry; but

all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson--they

could kill her.  Everybody said:

"Oh, she'll do.  That's all right.  Huck can come in."

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and

I made my mark on the paper.

"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"

"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.

"But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--"

"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary,"

says Tom Sawyer.  "We ain't burglars.  That ain't no sort of style.  We

are highwaymen.  We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on,

and kill the people and take their watches and money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly.  It's best.  Some authorities think different, but mostly

it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave

here, and keep them till they're ransomed."

"Ransomed?  What's that?"

"I don't know.  But that's what they do.  I've seen it in books; and so

of course that's what we've got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"

"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it.  Don't I tell you it's in the

books?  Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books,

and get things all muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are

these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?

--that's the thing I want to get at.  Now, what do you reckon it is?"

"Well, I don't know.  But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,

it means that we keep them till they're dead."

"Now, that's something LIKE.  That'll answer.  Why couldn't you said that

before?  We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome

lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get

loose."

"How you talk, Ben Rogers.  How can they get loose when there's a guard

over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"

"A guard!  Well, that IS good.  So somebody's got to set up all night and

never get any sleep, just so as to watch them.  I think that's

foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they

get here?"

"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why.  Now, Ben Rogers, do you

want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea.  Don't you

reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing

to do?  Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything?  Not by a good deal.

No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

"All right.  I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow.  Say, do we

kill the women, too?"

"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on.  Kill

the women?  No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that.  You

fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and

by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any

more."

"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it.

Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows

waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers.

But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was

scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't

want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him

mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.  But Tom

give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet

next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted

to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it

on Sunday, and that settled the thing.  They agreed to get together and

fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first

captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was

breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was

dog-tired.