The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

CHAPTER 8

Tom dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small ‘branch’ two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy’s soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released. It must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream for ever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers of the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday school record he could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world and been treated like a dog – like a very dog. She would be sorry some day – maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be kept compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away – ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas – and never came back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes, and spotted tights, were an offence when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague, august realm of the romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. No, better still, he would join the Indians and hunt buffaloes, and go on the war-path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eye-balls of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something grander even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! Now his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendour. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go ploughing the dancing seas, in his long low, black racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And, at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, all brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings: ‘It’s Tom Sawyer, the Pirate! the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!

Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together. He went to a rotten log near at hand, and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck Wood that sounded hollow. He put his hand there, and uttered this incantation impressively:

‘What hasn’t come here, come! What’s here, stay here!’

Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom’s astonishment was boundless. He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:

‘Well, that beats anything!’

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth was, that a superstition of his had failed here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But now this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. Tom’s whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterwards. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself on that point, so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called:

‘Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!

‘Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!’

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second, and then darted under again in a fright.

‘He dasn’t tell! So it was a witch that done it. I just knowed it.’

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up, discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his treasure-house, and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket, and tossed it in the same way, saying:

‘Brother, go find your brother!’

He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short or gone too far, so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other.

Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword, and a tin trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things, and bounded away, barelegged, with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way and that. He said cautiously – to an imaginary company:

‘Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.’

Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom called:

‘Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?’

‘Guy of Guisborne wants no man’s pass! Who art thou that – that—’

‘Dares to hold such language,’ said Tom, prompting, for they talked ‘by the book,’ from memory.

‘Who art thou that dares to hold such language?’

‘I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcass soon shall know.’

‘Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!’

They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, ‘two up and two down.’ Presently Tom said:

‘Now if you’ve got the hang, go it lively!’

So they ‘went it lively,’ panting and perspiring with the work. By and by Tom shouted:

‘Fall! fall! Why don’t you fall?’

‘I shan’t! Why don’t you fall yourself? You’re getting the worst of it.’

‘Why, that ain’t anything. I can’t fall. That ain’t the way it is in the book. The book says, “Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne!” You’re to turn around and let me hit you in the back.’

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack, and fell.

‘Now,’ said Joe, getting up, ‘you got to let me kill you. That’s fair.’

‘Why, I can’t do that. It ain’t in the book.’

‘Well, it’s blamed mean. That’s all.’

‘Well, say Joe, you can be Friar Tuck, or Much the Miller’s son, and lam me with a quarter-staff; or I’ll be the Sheriff of Nottingham, and you be Robin Hood a little while, and kill me.’

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe, representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth, gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, ‘Where this arrow falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree’ Then he shot the arrow, and fell back, and would have died; but he lit on a nettle, and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States for ever.

CHAPTER 9

At half-past nine that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed as usual. They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and waited in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still and stared up into the dark. Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness little, scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly’s chamber. And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed’s head made Tom shudder – it meant that somebody’s days were numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air and was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighbouring window disturbed him. A cry of ‘Scat! you devil!’ and the crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt’s wood-shed brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping along the roof of the ‘ell’ on all fours. He ‘meow’d’ with caution once or twice as he went; then jumped to the roof of the wood-shed, and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.

It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board-fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in. There was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none. ‘Sacred to the memory of’ So-and-so had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.

A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave.

Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom’s reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said in a whisper:

‘Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?’

Huckleberry whispered:

‘I wisht I knowed. It’s awful solemn like, ain’t it?’

‘I bet it is.’

There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. Then Tom whispered:

‘Say, Hucky – do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?’

‘O ’course he does. Least his spirit does.’

Tom, after a pause:

‘I wish I’d said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss.’

‘A body can’t be too particular how they talk ’bout these yer dead people, Tom.’

This was a damper, and conversation died again. Presently Tom seized his comrade’s arm and said:

‘Sh!’

‘What is it, Tom?’ And the two clung together with beating hearts.

‘Sh! There ’tis again! Didn’t you hear it?’

‘I—’

‘There! Now you hear it!’

‘Lord, Tom, they’re coming! They’re coming, sure. What’ll we do?’

‘I dono. Think they’ll see us?’

‘Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wish I hadn’t come.’

‘Oh, don’t be afeard. I don’t believe they’ll bother us. We ain’t doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe, they won’t notice us at all.’

‘I’ll try to, Tom, but, Lord! I’m all of a shiver.’

‘Listen!’

The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.

‘Look! see there!’ whispered Tom. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful.’

Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a shudder:

‘It’s the devils, sure enough. Three of ’em? Lordy, Tom, we’re goners! Can you pray?’

‘I’ll try, but don’t you be afeard. They ain’t going to hurt us. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I –”’

‘Sh!’

‘What is it, Huck?’

‘They’re humans! One of ’em is, anyway. One of ’em’s old Muff Potter’s voice.’

‘No—’tain’t so, is it?’

‘I bet I know it. Don’t you stir nor budge. He ain’t sharp enough to notice us. Drunk, same as usual, likely – blamed old rip!’

‘All right, I’ll keep still. Now they’re stuck. Can’t find it. Here they come again. Now they’re hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They’re pinted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o’ them voices; it’s Injun Joe.’

‘That’s so – that murderin’ half-breed! I’d druther they was devils a dern sight. What kin they be up to?’

The whispers died wholly out now, for the three men had reached the grave, and stood within a few feet of the boys’ hiding-place.

‘Here it is,’ said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young Dr. Robinson.

Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave, and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm-trees. He was so close the boys could have touched him.

‘Hurry, men!’ he said in a low voice. ‘The moon might come out at any moment.’

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull, woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They prised off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope, and then said:

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