The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain [book club suggestions TXT] 📗

of the berth, and talked. I couldn’t see them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they’d been having. I was glad I didn’t drink whisky; but it wouldn’t made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn’t a treed 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 earnest. Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says:

“He’s said he’ll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to him now it wouldn’t make no difference after the row and the way we’ve served him. Shore’s you’re born, he’ll turn State’s evidence; now you hear me. I’m for putting him out of his troubles.”

“So’m I,” says Packard, very quiet.

“Blame it, I’d sorter begun to think you wasn’t. Well, then, that’s all right. Le’s go and do it.”

“Hold on a minute; I hain’t had my say yit. You listen to me. Shooting’s good, but there’s quieter ways if the thing’s got to be done. But what I say is this: it ain’t good sense to go court’n around after a halter if you can git at what you’re up to in some way that’s jist as good and at the same time don’t bring you into no resks. Ain’t that so?”

“You bet it is. But how you goin’ to manage it this time?”

“Well, my idea is this: we’ll rustle around and gather up whatever pickins we’ve overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we’ll wait. Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self. I reckon that’s a considerble sight better ’n killin’ of him. I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git aroun’ it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals. Ain’t I right?”

“Yes, I reck’n you are. But s’pose 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, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “Jim!” and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a moan, and I says:

“Quick, Jim, it ain’t no time for fooling around and moaning; there’s a gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don’t hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows can’t get away from the wreck there’s one of ’em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their boat we can put all of ’em in a bad fix⁠—for the sheriff’ll get ’em. Quick⁠—hurry! I’ll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You start at the raft, and⁠—”

“Oh, my lordy, lordy! Raf’? Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done broke loose en gone I⁠—en here we is!”

XIII

Well, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering. We’d got to find that boat now⁠—had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too⁠—seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any further⁠—so scared he hadn’t hardly any strength left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the skiff, sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and says:

“Heave that blame lantern out o’ sight, Bill!”

He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. It was Packard. Then Bill he come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice:

“All ready⁠—shove off!”

I couldn’t hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says:

“Hold on⁠—’d you go through him?”

“No. Didn’t you?”

“No. So he’s got his share o’ the cash yet.”

“Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money.”

“Say, won’t he suspicion what we’re up to?”

“Maybe he won’t. But we got to have it anyway. Come along.”

So they got out and went in.

The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went!

We didn’t touch an oar, and we didn’t speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.

When we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much