Chapter Chapter 9 · 第9章

I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island

that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it,

because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile

wide.

This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot

high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep

and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and

by-and-by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on

the side towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms

bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in

there. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we

didn’t want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps

in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the

island, and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he

said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want

the things to get wet?

So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern,

and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by

to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off

of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one

side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a

good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in

there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.

Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the

birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like

all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these

regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all

blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so

thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and

here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn

up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a

gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as

if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and

blackest—_fst!_ it was as bright as glory, and you’d have a little

glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm,

hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again

in a second, and now you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash,

and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the

under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs—where

it’s long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

“Jim, this is nice,” I says. “I wouldn’t want to be nowhere else but

here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.”

“Well, you wouldn’t a ben here ’f it hadn’t a ben for Jim. You’d a ben

down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn’ mos’ drownded, too;

dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it’s gwyne to rain, en so do

de birds, chile.”

The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at

last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on

the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side

it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same

old distance across—a half a mile—because the Missouri shore was just a

wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty

cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.

We went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines

hung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every

old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things;

and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame,

on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your

hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles—they

would slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of

them. We could a had pets enough if we’d wanted them.

One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft—nice pine

planks. It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long,

and the top stood above water six or seven inches—a solid, level floor.

We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them

go; we didn’t show ourselves in daylight.

Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before

daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a

two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got

aboard—clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet,

so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.

The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then

we looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and

two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there

was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the

floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says:

“Hello, you!”

But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:

“De man ain’t asleep—he’s dead. You hold still—I’ll go en see.”

He went, and bent down and looked, and says:

“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I

reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look

at his face—it’s too gashly.”

I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he

needn’t done it; I didn’t want to see him. There was heaps of old

greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles,

and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls

was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.

There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some

women’s underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men’s clothing,

too. We put the lot into the canoe—it might come good. There was a

boy’s old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there

was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a

baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a

seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They

stood open, but there warn’t nothing left in them that was any account.

The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a

hurry, and warn’t fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and

a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of

tallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and

a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins

and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a

hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger

with some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather

dog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn’t

have no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable

good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden

leg. The straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good

enough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim,

and we couldn’t find the other one, though we hunted all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to

shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was

pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with

the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a

good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down

most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank,

and hadn’t no accidents and didn’t see nobody. We got home all safe.