Bab Bab 8 · CHAPTER VIII. Tom Decides on his Course—Old Scenes Re-enacted

. CHAPTER VIII. Tom Decides on his Course—Old Scenes Re-enacted

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 wood-pecker, 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 forever and ever, with the wind whispering through

the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over 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 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 offense, 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 warpath 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 eyeballs

of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was

something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!

_now_ his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable

splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!

How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low,

black-hulled 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, 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 crossbones 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 afterward. 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 carcase 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 sha’n’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 forever.