The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and baled her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for I couldn’t rest easy till I could see the ferry-boat start. But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in.

Well, before long, here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn’t much chance for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a little, but there wasn’t any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could stand it, I could.

Then here comes the ferry-boat; so I shoved for the middle of the river on a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach, I laid on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for Miss Hooker’s remainders, because the captain would know her Uncle Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferry-boat give it up and went for shore, and I laid into my work and went a-booming down the river.

It did seem a powerful long time before Jim’s light showed up; and when it did show, it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to get a little grey in the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people.

CHAPTER 14 (#ulink_d1da1757-0640-5d5e-8ce7-99e402eec685)

By and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spy-glass, and three boxes of seegars. We hadn’t ever been this rich before, in neither of our lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck, and at the ferry-boat; and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas, and he crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone, he nearly died; because he judged it was all up with him, anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn’t get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved, whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head, for a nigger.

I read considerable to Jim about kings, and dukes, and earls, and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, ’stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says:

‘I didn’t know dey was so many un um. I hain’t hearn ’bout none un um, skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat’s in a pack er k’yards. How much do a king git?’

‘Get?’ I says; ‘why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them.’

‘Ain’t dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?’

‘They don’t do nothing! Why, how you talk. They just set around.’

‘No—is dat so?’

‘Of course it is. They just set around. Except maybe when there’s a war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or go hawking—just hawking and sp—Sh!—d’you hear a noise?’

We skipped out and looked; but it warn’t nothing but the flutter of a steamboat’s wheel, away down coming around the point; so we come back.

‘Yes,’ says I, ‘and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don’t go just so he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem.’

‘Roun’ de which?’

‘Harem.’

‘What’s de harem?’

‘The place where he keeps his wives. Don’t you know about the harem? Solomon had one; he had about a milion wives.’

‘Why, yes, dat’s so; I—I’d done forgot it. A harem’s a bo’d’n-house, I reck’n. Mos’ likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck’n de wives quarrels considable; en dat ‘crease de racket. Yit dey say Sollermun de wises’ man dat ever live’. I doan’ take no stock in dat. Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids’ er sich a blimblammin’ all de time? No—’deed he wouldn’t. A wise man ’ud take en buil’ a biler-factry; en den he could shet down