Chương Chương 35 · 第35章

It would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down

into the woods; because Tom said we got to have _some_ light to see how

to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble;

what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that’s called

fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a

dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down

to rest, and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.

And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.

There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there _ought_ to be a

watchman. There ain’t even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. And

there’s Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of

his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off

the chain. And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the

punkin-headed nigger, and don’t send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim

could a got out of that window-hole before this, only there wouldn’t be

no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it,

Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I ever see. You got to invent

_all_ the difficulties. Well, we can’t help it; we got to do the best

we can with the materials we’ve got. Anyhow, there’s one thing—there’s

more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and

dangers, where there warn’t one of them furnished to you by the people

who it was their duty to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all

out of your own head. Now look at just that one thing of the lantern.

When you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to _let on_ that a

lantern’s resky. Why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we

wanted to, _I_ believe. Now, whilst I think of it, we got to hunt up

something to make a saw out of the first chance we get.”

“What do we want of a saw?”

“What do we _want_ of it? Hain’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed

off, so as to get the chain loose?”

“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the

chain off.”

“Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. You _can_ get up the

infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain’t you ever read

any books at all?—Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny,

nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of getting a

prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the way all the

best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just

so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t be found, and put some dirt

and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can’t

see no sign of it’s being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly

sound. Then, the night you’re ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she

goes; slip off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch

your rope ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in

the moat—because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know—and

there’s your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and

fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or

Navarre, or wherever it is. It’s gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat

to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the escape, we’ll dig one.”

I says:

“What do we want of a moat when we’re going to snake him out from under

the cabin?”

But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had his

chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head;

then sighs again, and says:

“No, it wouldn’t do—there ain’t necessity enough for it.”

“For what?” I says.

“Why, to saw Jim’s leg off,” he says.

“Good land!” I says; “why, there ain’t _no_ necessity for it. And what

would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?”

“Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn’t get the

chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would

be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain’t necessity

enough in this case; and, besides, Jim’s a nigger, and wouldn’t

understand the reasons for it, and how it’s the custom in Europe; so

we’ll let it go. But there’s one thing—he can have a rope ladder; we

can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we

can send it to him in a pie; it’s mostly done that way. And I’ve et

worse pies.”

“Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk,” I says; “Jim ain’t got no use for a

rope ladder.”

“He _has_ got use for it. How _you_ talk, you better say; you don’t

know nothing about it. He’s _got_ to have a rope ladder; they all do.”

“What in the nation can he _do_ with it?”

“_Do_ with it? He can hide it in his bed, can’t he? That’s what they all

do; and _he’s_ got to, too. Huck, you don’t ever seem to want to do

anything that’s regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the

time. S’pose he _don’t_ do nothing with it? ain’t it there in his bed,

for a clew, after he’s gone? and don’t you reckon they’ll want clews? Of

course they will. And you wouldn’t leave them any? That would be a

_pretty_ howdy-do, _wouldn’t_ it! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I says, “if it’s in the regulations, and he’s got to have it,

all right, let him have it; because I don’t wish to go back on no

regulations; but there’s one thing, Tom Sawyer—if we go to tearing up

our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we’re going to get into trouble

with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you’re born. Now, the way I look at

it, a hickry-bark ladder don’t cost nothing, and don’t waste nothing,

and is just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as

any rag ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain’t had no

experience, and so _he_ don’t care what kind of a—”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I’d keep

still—that’s what _I’d_ do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping

by a hickry-bark ladder? Why, it’s perfectly ridiculous.”

“Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you’ll take my

advice, you’ll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.”

He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says:

“Borrow a shirt, too.”

“What do we want of a shirt, Tom?”

“Want it for Jim to keep a journal on.”

“Journal your granny—_Jim_ can’t write.”

“S’pose he _can’t_ write—he can make marks on the shirt, can’t he, if

we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron

barrel-hoop?”

“Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better

one; and quicker, too.”

“_Prisoners_ don’t have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull

pens out of, you muggins. They _always_ make their pens out of the

hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or

something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them

weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because

they’ve got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. _They_ wouldn’t use a

goose-quill if they had it. It ain’t regular.”

“Well, then, what’ll we make him the ink out of?”

“Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that’s the common sort

and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that;

and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message

to let the world know where he’s captivated, he can write it on the

bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The

Iron Mask always done that, and it’s a blame’ good way, too.”

“Jim ain’t got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan.”

“That ain’t nothing; we can get him some.”

“Can’t nobody _read_ his plates.”

“That ain’t got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn. All _he’s_ got to

do is to write on the plate and throw it out. You don’t _have_ to be

able to read it. Why, half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner

writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”

“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”

“Why, blame it all, it ain’t the _prisoner’s_ plates.”

“But it’s _somebody’s_ plates, ain’t it?”

“Well, spos’n it is? What does the _prisoner_ care whose—”

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we

cleared out for the house.

Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of

the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we

went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it

borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it

warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing

prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get

it, and nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no crime in a

prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s

his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a

perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for

to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it

would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person

would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal

everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss,

one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch

and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without

telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could

steal anything we _needed_. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But

he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with; there’s where the

difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in, and

smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right.

So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my

representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of

gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a

watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was

settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom

he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep

watch. By-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile

to talk. He says:

“Everything’s all right now except tools; and that’s easy fixed.”

“Tools?” I says.

“Yes.”

“Tools for what?”

“Why, to dig with. We ain’t a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”

“Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a

nigger out with?” I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,

and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out

with? Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at

all—what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero? Why, they

might as well lend him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels—why,

they wouldn’t furnish ’em to a king.”

“Well, then,” I says, “if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do

we want?”

“A couple of case-knives.”

“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”

“Yes.”

“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”

“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is, it’s the _right_

way—and it’s the regular way. And there ain’t no _other_ way, that ever

_I_ heard of, and I’ve read all the books that gives any information

about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife—and not

through dirt, mind you; generly it’s through solid rock. And it takes

them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one

of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the

harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was _he_

at it, you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, guess.”

“I don’t know. A month and a half.”

“_Thirty-seven year_—and he come out in China. _That’s_ the kind. I

wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock.”

“_Jim_ don’t know nobody in China.”

“What’s _that_ got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But

you’re always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can’t you stick to

the main point?”

“All right—_I_ don’t care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and

Jim don’t, either, I reckon. But there’s one thing, anyway—Jim’s too

old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won’t last.”

“Yes he will _last_, too. You don’t reckon it’s going to take

thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”

“How long will it take, Tom?”

“Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn’t

take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.

He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his next move will be to

advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can’t resk being as long

digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a

couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain, what I

recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and

after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it

thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the

first time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that’ll be the best way.”

“Now, there’s _sense_ in that,” I says. “Letting on don’t cost nothing;

letting on ain’t no trouble; and if it’s any object, I don’t mind

letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn’t strain me

none, after I got my hand in. So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a

couple of case-knives.”

“Smouch three,” he says; “we want one to make a saw out of.”

“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says,

“there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the

weather-boarding behind the smoke-house.”

He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:

“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and

smouch the knives—three of them.” So I done it.