The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapters 8–14

Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there.

I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it.

I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.

When I got to camp I warn’t feeling very brash, there warn’t much sand in my craw; but I says, this ain’t no time to be fooling around.

When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot.

People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don’t make no difference.

“You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?”

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.

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.

There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.

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...

We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat.

He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring.

They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat’s as white as snow and makes a good fry.

He’ll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched.

You see, you’re a runaway ’prentice, that’s all. It ain’t anything. There ain’t no harm in it. You’ve been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut.

Answer up prompt now—don't stop to study over it.

Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain.

A towhead is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fire—no, sir, she'd fetch a dog.

When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry.

Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves.

We made an extra steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something.

It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along.

When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides.

The lightning showed her very distinct.

You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country.

“Bless yo’ heart for them words, Jake Packard! I’ll never forgit you long’s I live!” says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.

But before they got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come.

They talked low and earnest.

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.

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.

The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole there on the wreck.

As I went by I see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double- hull ferryboat.

I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some woodboats; for I couldn’t rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start.

I judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in.

I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, ’stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he was interested.

En I reck’n de wives quarrels considable; en dat ’crease de racket.

Does I shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do b'long to, en han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would?