Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little
or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I
thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is
a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever
I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly
November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially
whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to
sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to
the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all
men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings
towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as
Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and
left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery,
where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few
hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers
there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to
Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?-
Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon
thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the
spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of
ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still
better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath
and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then
is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly
bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of
the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling
And there they stand- miles of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from
lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they
all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of
all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost
any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves
you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most
absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his
legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water
there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American
desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are
wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,
quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the
Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a
hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his
meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy
smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping
spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies
thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon
this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed
upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for
scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the
one charm wanting?- Water- there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but
a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the
poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver,
deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his
money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust
healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to
go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel
such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the
Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is
not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus,
who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the
fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves
see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow
hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean
to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a
passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have
something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't
sleep of nights- do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never
go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as
a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of
such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable
respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is
quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships,
barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,- though I
confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on
ship-board- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;- though once broiled,
judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one
who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl
than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon
broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those
creatures in their huge bakehouses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb
down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they
rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a
grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant
enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old
established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or
Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the
tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest
boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the
Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and
sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in
the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks
anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old
hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then,
however the old sea-captains may order me about- however they may thump and
punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way- either in a
physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be
content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me
for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever
heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the
difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is
perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed
upon us. But being paid,- what will compare with it? The urbane activity with
which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so
earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves
to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and
pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more
prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean
maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his
atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he
breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead
their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little
suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as
a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage;
this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant
surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some
unaccountable way- he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my
going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence
that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and
solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill
must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States."WHALING
VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.""BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates,
put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down
for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel
comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I cannot tell why this was exactly;
yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into
the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various
disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling
me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased
freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.
Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild
and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless
perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand
Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men,
perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden
seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to
perceive a horror, and could still be social with it- would they let me- since
it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one
lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great
flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that
swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless
processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom,
like a snow hill in the air.I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag,
tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the
good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday
night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet
for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would
offer, till the following Monday.

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this
same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related
that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no
other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something
about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased
me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the
business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much
behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original- the Tyre of this Carthage;-
the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from
Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes
to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that
first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported
cobblestones- so goes the story- to throw at the whales, in order to discover
when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?

Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New
Bedford, ere could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of
concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very
dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and
cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my
pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,- So, wherever you go,
Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street
shouldering my bag, and comparing the towards the north with the darkness
towards the south- wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the
night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too
particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of"The Crossed
Harpoons"- but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the
bright red windows of the"Sword-Fish Inn," there came such fervent rays, that
it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for
everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic
pavement,- rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty
projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were
in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing
one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the
tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear?
get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I
went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,
doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here
and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the
night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but
deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide
building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as
if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I
did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the
flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,
Gomorrah? But"The Crossed Harpoons," and the"The Sword-Fish?"- this, then
must needs be the sign of"The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a
loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces
turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was
beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was
about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing
there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign
of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and
heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over
the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing tall straight jet
of misty spray, and these words underneath-"The Spouter Inn:- Peter Coffin."

Coffin?- Spouter?- Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But
it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an
emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time,
looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as
if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as
the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that
here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

It was a queer sort of place- a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it
were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that
tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor
Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to
any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed."In of
that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer- of whose works I
possess the only copy extant-"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou
lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or
whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both
sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought
I, as this passage occurred to my mind- old black-letter, thou reasonest well.
Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity
they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little
lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The
universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a
million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the
curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he
might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet
that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives,
in his red silken wrapper- (he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a
fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of
their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the
privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the
grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would
he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea,
ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of
Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of
the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made
of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks
the tepid tears of orphans.

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty
of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what
sort of a place this"Spouter" may be.

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low,
straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of
some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so
thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by
which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic
visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way
arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades
and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in
the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched.
But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and
especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry,
you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not
be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black
mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim,
perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy
picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort
of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze
you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what
that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive
idea would dart you through.- It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale.- It's the
unnatural combat of the four primal elements.- It's a blasted heath.- It's a
Hyperborean winter scene.- It's the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.
But last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the
picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop;
does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great
leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly
based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed
upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane;
the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone
visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is
in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of
monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth
resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was
sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the
new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered
what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with
such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling
lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With
this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill
fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon- so like a
corkscrew now- was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years
afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the
tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled
full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump.

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way- cut through what
in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all round-
you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low
ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would
almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling
night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood
a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with
dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from
the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den- the bar- a rude
attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast
arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it.
Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks;
and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which
name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their
money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true
cylinders without- within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully
tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into
the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge
is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass- the Cape
Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a
table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander. I sought the
landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received
for answer that his house was full- not a bed unoccupied."But avast," he
added, tapping his forehead,"you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's
blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to
that sort of thing."

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do
so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the
landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not
decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town on
so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's blanket.

"I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?- you want supper? Supper'll be
ready directly."

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the
Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his
jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his
legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn't make much
headway, I thought.

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room.
It was cold as Iceland- no fire at all- the landlord said he couldn't afford
it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were
fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea
with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind-
not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper!
One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a
most direful manner.

"My boy," said the landlord,"you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered,"that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny,"the harpooneer is a
dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't- he eats nothing but
steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I."Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this"dark complexioned"
harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we
should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else
to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried,
"That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a
three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest
news from the Feegees."

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in
rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats,
and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged,
and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from
Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house
they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's
mouth- the bar- when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon
poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head,
upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he
swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of
how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the
weather side of an ice-island.

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the
arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most
obstreperously.

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed
desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet
upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man
interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon
become my shipmate (though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative
is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood
full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I
have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt,
making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of
his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His
voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I
thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in
Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this
man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade
on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and
being, it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry
of"Bulkington! Bulkington! where's Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in
pursuit of him.

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet
after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had
occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen.

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not
sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people like to be
private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown
stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer,
then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason
why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for
sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be
sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock,
and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of
sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or
woolen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of
the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my
decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should
tumble in upon me at midnight- how could I tell from what vile hole he had been
coming?

"Landlord! I've changed my mind about that harpooneer.- I shan't sleep with
him. I'll try the bench here."

"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and
it's a plaguy rough board here"- feeling of the knots and notches."But wait a
bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar- wait, I say,
and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with his
old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away
at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left;
till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The
landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to
quit- the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the
planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the
shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the
middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short;
but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the
other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one- so
there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the
only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my
back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold
air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at
all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the
window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate
vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night.

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march
on him- bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the
most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea but upon second thoughts I
dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped
out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to
knock me down!

Still looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a
sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think that after
all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown
harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long.
I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good
bedfellows after all- there's no telling.

But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and
going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.

"Landlord! said I,"what sort of a chap is he- does he always keep such late
hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily
tickled at something beyond my comprehension."No," he answered,"generally
he's an early bird- airley to bed and airley to rise- yea, he's the bird what
catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see
what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head."

"Can't sell his head?- What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are
telling me?" getting into a towering rage."Do you pretend to say, landlord,
that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather
Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"

"That's precisely it," said the landlord,"and I told him he couldn't sell it
here, the market's overstocked."

"With what?" shouted I.

"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"

"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly,"you'd better stop
spinning that yarn to me- I'm not green."

"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick,"but I rayther
guess you'll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his
head."

"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this
unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

"It's broke a'ready," said he.

"Broke," said I-"broke, do you mean?"

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess."

"Landlord," said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snowstorm-
"landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too
without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only
give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And
about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the
most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an
uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow- a sort
of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this
harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night
with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story
about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this
harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you,
sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly
would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution."

"Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long breath,"that's a purty long sarmon
for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here
harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just arrived from the south seas,
where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know),
and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night,
cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about
the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He wanted to last Sunday, but I
stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a
string, for all the airth like a string of inions."

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that
the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me- but at the same time
what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean
into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads
of dead idolators?

"Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man."

"He pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder."But come, it's a nice bed: Sal and me
slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There's plenty of room for two
to kick about in that bed; it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it
up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a
dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the
floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do.
Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a
candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood
irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed"I vum it's
Sunday- you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's come to anchor somewhere-
come along then; do come; won't ye come?"

I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered
into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a
prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep
abreast.

"There," said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that
did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table;"there, make yourself
comfortable now; and good night to ye." I turned round from eyeing the bed, but
he had disappeared.

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most
elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the
room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture
belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered
fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging
to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one
corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no
doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone
fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the
head of the bed.

But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light,
and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some
satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large
door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the
stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in
the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But
could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and
parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to
try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and
thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had
been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against
the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in
such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.

I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this
head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on the
bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle
of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my
shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was,
and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not coming home
at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of
my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and
commended myself to the care of heaven.

Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery, there is no
telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time.
At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing
towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw
a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door.

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler.
But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to.
Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other,
the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his
candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began
working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being
in the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for
some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished,
however, he turned round- when, good heavens; what a sight! Such a face! It was
of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large
blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible
bedfellow; he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from
the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the
light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those
black squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I
knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me.
I remembered a story of a white man- a whaleman too- who, falling among the
cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the
course of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what
is it, thought I, after all! It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any
sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of
it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of
tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning;
but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into a purplish yellow
one. However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there
produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas
were passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at
all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in
it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with
the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of a room, he then
took the New Zealand head- a ghastly thing enough- and crammed it down into the
bag. He now took off his hat- a new beaver hat- when I came nigh singing out
with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head- none to speak of at least-
nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish
head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger
stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever
I bolted a dinner.

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was
the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this headpeddling
purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of
fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I
confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had
thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him
that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory
answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his
chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the
same squares as his face, his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he
seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from it with a
sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as a parcel of
dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite
plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a
whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked
to think of it. A peddler of heads too- perhaps the heads of his own brothers.
He might take a fancy to mine- heavens! look at that tomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something
that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed
be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he
had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at
length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly
the color of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at
first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved some
similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened
a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a
wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the
empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little
hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and
all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a
very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at
ease meantime- to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double
handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before
the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from
the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after
many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers
(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing
out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite
offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy
such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics
were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed
to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other,
during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last
extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it
again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a
dead woodcock.

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now
exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping
into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light
was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound.

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking
up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and
then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great
clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this
wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out,
I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began
feeling me.

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the
wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet,
and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses
satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning.

"Who-e debel you?"- he at last said-"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so
saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark.

"Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin!" shouted I."Landlord! Watch! Coffin!
Angels! save me!"

"Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the
cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot
tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank
heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and
leaping from the bed I ran up to him.

"Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again,"Queequeg here wouldn't harm a
hair of your head."

"Stop your grinning," shouted I,"and why didn't you tell me that that infernal
harpooneer was a cannibal?"

"I thought ye know'd it;- didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around
town?- but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here- you sabbee
me, I sabbee- you this man sleepe you- you sabbee?"

"Me sabbee plenty"- grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up
in bed.

"You gettee in," he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the
clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind
and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he
was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have
been making about, thought I to myself- the man's a human being just as I am:
he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better
sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

"Landlord," said I,"tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever
you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him.
But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides,
I ain't insured."

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned
me to get into bed- rolling over to one side as much as to say- I won't touch a
leg of ye."

"Good night, landlord," said I,"you may go."

I turned in, and never slept better in my life.
You don't know about me without you have read a
book by the name of The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was
made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth,
mainly. There was things which he stretched, but
mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never
seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it
was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt
Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and
the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book,
which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as
I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom
and me found the money that the robbers hid in the
cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars
apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money
when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took
it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar
a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body
could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she
took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize
me; but it was rough living in the house all the time,
considering how dismal regular and decent the widow
was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it
no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my
sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But
Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going
to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would
go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went
back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor
lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names,
too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me
in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing
but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well,
then, the old thing commenced again. The widow
rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time.
When you got to the table you couldn't go right to
eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck
down her head and grumble a little over the victuals,
though there warn't really anything the matter with
them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked
by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different;
things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps
around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me
about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat
to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out
that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so
then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't
take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow
to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean
practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it
any more. That is just the way with some people.
They get down on a thing when they don't know
nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about
Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to any-
body, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of
fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in
it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all
right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid,
with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and
took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She
worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then
the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it
much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull,
and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say,"Don't
put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and"Don't
scrunch up like that, Huckleberry -- set up straight;"
and pretty soon she would say,"Don't gap and stretch
like that, Huckleberry -- why don't you try to be-
have?" Then she told me all about the bad place,
and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then,
but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go
somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't
particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said;
said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was
going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I
couldn't see no advantage in going where she was
going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it.
But I never said so, because it would only make
trouble, and wouldn't do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told
me all about the good place. She said all a body
would have to do there was to go around all day long
with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't
think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if
she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she
said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about
that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got
tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the
niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was
off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of
candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a
chair by the window and tried to think of something
cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I
most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and
the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and
I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about some-
body that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog cry-
ing about somebody that was going to die; and the
wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I
couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold
shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I
heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it
wants to tell about something that's on its mind and
can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in
its grave, and has to go about that way every night
grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish
I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went
crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit
in the candle; and before I could budge it was all
shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that
that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some
bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes
off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks
three times and crossed my breast every time; and
then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to
keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence.
You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've
found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I
hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep
off bad luck when you'd killed a spider.

I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my
pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as
death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well,
after a long time I heard the clock away off in the
town go boom -- boom -- boom -- twelve licks; and
all still again -- stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard
a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees --
something was a stirring. I set still and listened.
Directly I could just barely hear a"me-yow! me-
yow!" down there. That was good! Says I,"me-
yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put
out the light and scrambled out of the window on to
the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and
crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there
was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees
back towards the end of the widow's garden,
stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our
heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell
over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down
and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim,
was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him
pretty clear, because there was a light behind him.
He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute,
listening. Then he says:

"Who dah?"

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing
down and stood right between us; we could a touched
him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes
that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close
together. There was a place on my ankle that got to
itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun
to itch; and next my back, right between my shoul-
ders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well,
I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are
with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to
sleep when you ain't sleepy -- if you are anywheres
where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch
all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon
Jim says:

"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats
ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne
to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I
hears it agin."

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.
He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his
legs out till one of them most touched one of mine.
My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come
into my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun
to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching under-
neath. I didn't know how I was going to set still.
This miserableness went on as much as six or seven
minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I
was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned
I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I set
my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim
begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore --
and then I was pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me -- kind of a little noise
with his mouth -- and we went creeping away on our
hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for
fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a dis-
turbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. Then
Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would
slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want
him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come.
But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got
three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for
pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get
away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl
to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play
something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good
while, everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path,
around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on
the steep top of the hill the other side of the house.
Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung
it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but
he didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches be-
witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all
over the State, and then set him under the trees again,
and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And
next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to
New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he
spread it more and more, till by and by he said they
rode him all over the world, and tired him most to
death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim
was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he
wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers
would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was
more looked up to than any nigger in that country.
Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open
and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.
Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by
the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and
letting on to know all about such things, Jim would
happen in and say,"Hm! What you know 'bout
witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to
take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center
piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a
charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and
told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch
witches whenever he wanted to just by saying some-
thing to it; but he never told what it was he said to it.
Niggers would come from all around there and give
Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-
center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the
devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined
for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of
having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hill-
top we looked away down into the village and could
see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick
folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever
so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole
mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down
the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and
two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard.
So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two
mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and
went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made
everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed
them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the
bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on
our hands and knees. We went about two hundred
yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked
about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked
under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there
was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got
into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold,
and there we stopped. Tom says:

"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it
Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join
has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood."

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of
paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It
swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell
any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to
any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to
kill that person and his family must do it, and he
mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them
and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign
of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the
band could use that mark, and if he did he must be
sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And
if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets,
he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass
burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his
name blotted off of the list with blood and never men-
tioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it
and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and
asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said,
some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and
robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned
had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES
of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good
idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben
Rogers says:

"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what
you going to do 'bout him?"

"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.

"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find
him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs
in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts
for a year or more."

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me
out, because they said every boy must have a family
or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and
square for the others. Well, nobody could think of
anything to do -- everybody was stumped, and set
still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I
thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson
-- they could kill her. Everybody said:

"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come
in."

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get
blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.

"Now," says Ben Rogers,"what's the line of busi-
ness of this Gang?"

"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.

"But who are we going to rob? -- houses, or cattle,
or --"

"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't rob-
bery; it's burglary," says Tom Sawyer."We ain't
burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are high-
waymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road,
with masks on, and kill the people and take their
watches and money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think
different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them --
except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep
them till they're ransomed."

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've
seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've
got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"

"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell
you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing
different from what's in the books, and get things all
muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but
how in the nation are these fellows going to be ran-
somed if we don't know how to do it to them? -- that's
the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon
it is?"

"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them
till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till
they're dead."

"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer.
Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them
till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot
they'll be, too -- eating up everything, and always
trying to get loose."

"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get
loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot
them down if they move a peg?"

"A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody's
got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so
as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why
can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as
they get here?"

"Because it ain't in the books so -- that's why.
Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular,
or don't you? -- that's the idea. Don't you reckon
that the people that made the books knows what's the
correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn
'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll
just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool
way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?"

"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I
wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever
saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them
to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them;
and by and by they fall in love with you, and never
want to go home any more."

"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't
take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have the cave
so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be
ransomed, that there won't be no place for the rob-
bers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when
they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said
he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to
be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-
baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would
go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him
five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home
and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some
people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only
Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but
all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday,
and that settled the thing. They agreed to get to-
gether and fix a day as soon as they could, and then
we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper
second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just
before day was breaking. My new clothes was all
greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.

Well, I got a good going-over in the morning
from old Miss Watson on account of my
clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only
cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry
that I thought I would behave awhile if I could. Then
Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but
nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day,
and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't
so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks.
It warn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for
the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't
make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss
Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She
never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way.

I set down one time back in the woods, and had a
long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can
get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn
get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the
widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole?
Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to my
self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the
widow about it, and she said the thing a body could
get by praying for it was"spiritual gifts." This was
too many for me, but she told me what she meant -- I
must help other people, and do everything I could for
other people, and look out for them all the time, and
never think about myself. This was including Miss
Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and
turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't
see no advantage about it -- except for the other peo-
ple; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it
any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow
would take me one side and talk about Providence in a
way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next
day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all
down again. I judged I could see that there was two
Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable
show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Wat-
son's got him there warn't no help for him any more.
I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to
the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make
out how he was a-going to be any better off then than
what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so
kind of low-down and ornery.

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and
that was comfortable for me; I didn't want to see him
no more. He used to always whale me when he was
sober and could get his hands on me; though I used
to take to the woods most of the time when he was
around. Well, about this time he was found in the
river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so
people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said
this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged,
and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap;
but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, be-
cause it had been in the water so long it warn't much
like a face at all. They said he was floating on his
back in the water. They took him and buried him on
the bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I
happened to think of something. I knowed mighty
well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but
on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap,
but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was
uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would
turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a month, and
then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed
nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pre-
tended. We used to hop out of the woods and go
charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts
taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any
of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs"ingots," and
he called the turnips and stuff"julery," and we would
go to the cave and powwow over what we had done,
and how many people we had killed and marked. But
I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a
boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he
called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to
get together), and then he said he had got secret news
by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish
merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave
Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred
camels, and over a thousand"sumter" mules, all
loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only
a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay
in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and
scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords
and guns, and get ready. He never could go after
even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and
guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath
and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you
rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes
more than what they was before. I didn't believe we
could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but
I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on
hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when
we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down
the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs,
and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It
warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only
a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased
the children up the hollow; but we never got anything
but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got
a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a
tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us
drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds,
and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads
of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs
there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why
couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so
ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I
would know without asking. He said it was all done
by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of
soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on,
but we had enemies which he called magicians; and
they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-
school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the
thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom
Sawyer said I was a numskull.

"Why," said he,"a magician could call up a lot
of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing
before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall
as a tree and as big around as a church."

"Well," I says,"s'pose we got some genies to
help US -- can't we lick the other crowd then?"

"How you going to get them?"

"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"

"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring,
and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder
and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling,
and everything they're told to do they up and do it.
They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up
by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superinten-
dent over the head with it -- or any other man."

"Who makes them tear around so?"

"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They
belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and
they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them
to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and
fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and
fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to
marry, they've got to do it -- and they've got to do it
before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've
got to waltz that palace around over the country
wherever you want it, you understand."

"Well," says I,"I think they are a pack of flat-
heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of
fooling them away like that. And what's more -- if I
was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I
would drop my business and come to him for the rub-
bing of an old tin lamp."

"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to
come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or
not."

"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a
church? All right, then; I WOULD come; but I lay
I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in
the country."

"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn.
You don't seem to know anything, somehow -- perfect
saphead."

I thought all this over for two or three days, and
then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it.
I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in
the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an
Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it
warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I
judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom
Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs
and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It
had all the marks of a Sunday-school.

Well, three or four months run along, and it was
well into the winter now. I had been to school
most all the time and could spell and read and write
just a little, and could say the multiplication table up
to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I
could ever get any further than that if I was to live
forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, any-
way.

At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I
could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I
played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me
good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to
school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of
used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so
raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed
pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold
weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods
sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the
old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new
ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming
along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She
said she warn't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar
at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I
could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the
bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and
crossed me off. She says,"Take your hands away,
Huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!"
The widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't
going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well
enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried
and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall
on me, and what it was going to be. There is ways to
keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one
of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just
poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb over the
stile where you go through the high board fence.
There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I
seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the
quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then
went on around the garden fence. It was funny they
hadn't come in, after standing around so. I couldn't
make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was
going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at
the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but
next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel
made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I
looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I
didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick
as I could get there. He said:

"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did
you come for your interest?"

"No, sir," I says;"is there some for me?"

"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night -- over a
hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you.
You had better let me invest it along with your six
thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it."

"No, sir," I says,"I don't want to spend it. I
don't want it at all -- nor the six thousand, nuther.
I want you to take it; I want to give it to you -- the
six thousand and all."

He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make
it out. He says:

"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"

I says,"Don't you ask me no questions about it,
please. You'll take it -- won't you?"

He says:

"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"

"Please take it," says I,"and don't ask me noth-
ing -- then I won't have to tell no lies."

He studied a while, and then he says:

"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your
property to me -- not give it. That's the correct
idea."

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it
over, and says:

"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That
means I have bought it of you and paid you for it.
Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it."

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as
your fist, which had been took out of the fourth
stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it.
He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything. So I went to him that night and told him
pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow.
What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do,
and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball
and said something over it, and then he held it up and
dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only
rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then
another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got
down on his knees, and put his ear against it and
listened. But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't
talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without
money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit
quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed
through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow,
even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick
it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time.
(I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I
got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money,
but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe
it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit
it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the
hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would
split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in
between and keep it there all night, and next morning
you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy
no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a
minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato
would do that before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got
down and listened again. This time he said the hair-
ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole
fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-
ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:

"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne
to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin
he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to res' easy en let
de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels
hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en
shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him
to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en
bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne
to fetch him at de las'. But you is all right. You
gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en con-
sidable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en
sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's
gwyne to git well agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout
you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one is
dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to
marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You
wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin,
en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat
you's gwyne to git hung."

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that
night there sat pap -- his own self!

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around.
and there he was. I used to be scared of him all
the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was
scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken
-- that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when
my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected;
but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth
bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was
long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you
could see his eyes shining through like he was behind
vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face,
where his face showed; it was white; not like another
man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white
to make a body's flesh crawl -- a tree-toad white, a
fish-belly white. As for his clothes -- just rags, that
was all. He had one ankle resting on t'other knee;
the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes
stuck through, and he worked them now and then.
His hat was laying on the floor -- an old black slouch
with the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at
me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle
down. I noticed the window was up; so he had clumb
in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By
and by he says:

"Starchy clothes -- very. You think you're a good
deal of a big-bug, DON'T you?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he.
"You've put on considerable many frills since I been
away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done
with you. You're educated, too, they say -- can read
and write. You think you're better'n your father,
now, don't you, because he can't? I'LL take it out of
you. Who told you you might meddle with such
hifalut'n foolishness, hey? -- who told you you could?"

"The widow. She told me."

"The widow, hey? -- and who told the widow she
could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of
her business?"

"Nobody never told her."

"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky
here -- you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn
people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own
father and let on to be better'n what HE is. You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you hear?
Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write,
nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't
before THEY died. I can't; and here you're a-swelling
yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it --
you hear? Say, lemme hear you read."

I took up a book and begun something about Gen-
eral Washington and the wars. When I'd read about
a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his
hand and knocked it across the house. He says:

"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when
you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting
on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my
smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan
you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I
never see such a son.

He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some
cows and a boy, and says:

"What's this?"

"It's something they give me for learning my
lessons good."

He tore it up, and says:

"I'll give you something better -- I'll give you a
cowhide.

He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute,
and then he says:

"AIN'T you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A
bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n'-glass; and a piece
of carpet on the floor -- and your own father got to
sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a
son. I bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you
before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no end to
your airs -- they say you're rich. Hey? -- how's that?"

"They lie -- that's how."

"Looky here -- mind how you talk to me; I'm a-
standing about all I can stand now -- so don't gimme
no sass. I've been in town two days, and I hain't
heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard
about it away down the river, too. That's why I
come. You git me that money to-morrow -- I want
it."

"I hain't got no money."

"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it.
I want it."

"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge
Thatcher; he'll tell you the same."

"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle,
too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much
you got in your pocket? I want it."

"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to --"

"It don't make no difference what you want it for
-- you just shell it out."

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then
he said he was going down town to get some whisky;
said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got
out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed
me for putting on frills and trying to be better than
him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back
and put his head in again, and told me to mind about
that school, because he was going to lay for me and
lick me if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge
Thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make
him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he
swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the
court to take me away from him and let one of them
be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just
come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said
courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they
could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away
from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow
had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He
said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I
didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three
dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and
whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over
town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they
jailed him, and next day they had him before court,
and jailed him again for a week. But he said HE was
satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make
it warm for HIM.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going
to make a man of him. So he took him to his
own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and
had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the
family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And
after supper he talked to him about temperance and
such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a
fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going
to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't
be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help
him and not look down on him. The judge said he
could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his
wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had
always been misunderstood before, and the judge said
he believed it. The old man said that what a man
wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge
said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was
bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand,
and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold
of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of
a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man
that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll
go back. You mark them words -- don't forget I said
them. It's a clean hand now; shake it -- don't be
afeard."

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and
cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old
man he signed a pledge -- made his mark. The judge
said it was the holiest time on record, or something
like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beauti-
ful room, which was the spare room, and in the night
some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to
the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his
new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again
and had a good old time; and towards daylight he
crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off
the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and
was most froze to death when somebody found him
after sun-up. And when they come to look at that
spare room they had to take soundings before they
could navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned
a body could reform the old man with a shotgun,
maybe, but he didn't know no other way.

Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around
again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in
the courts to make him give up that money, and he
went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched
me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to
school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him
most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much
before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That
law trial was a slow business -- appeared like they
warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now
and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the
judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding.
Every time he got money he got drunk; and every
time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and
every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just
suited -- this kind of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow's too much
and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using
around there she would make trouble for him. Well,
WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was
Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day
in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the
river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to
the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't
no houses but an old log hut in a place where the
timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't
know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a
chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he
always locked the door and put the key under his head
nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon,
and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived
on. Every little while he locked me in and went down
to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish
and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got
drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The
widow she found out where I was by and by, and she
sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap
drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after
that till I was used to being where I was, and liked
it -- all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable
all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study.
Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to
be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got
to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to
wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed
and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a
book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the
time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had
stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but
now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objec-
tions. It was pretty good times up in the woods
there, take it all around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry,
and I couldn't stand it. I was all over welts. He got
to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once
he locked me in and was gone three days. It was
dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned,
and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was
scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way
to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin
many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There
warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get
through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too
narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap
was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in
the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted
the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I
was most all the time at it, because it was about the
only way to put in the time. But this time I found
something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw
without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter
and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and
went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed
against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the
table, to keep the wind from blowing through the
chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the
table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw
a section of the big bottom log out -- big enough to
let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I
was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap's
gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work,
and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty
soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor -- so he was his natural
self. He said he was down town, and everything was
going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would
win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got
started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it
off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do
it And he said people allowed there'd be another
trial to get me away from him and give me to the
widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win
this time. This shook me up considerable, because I
didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and
be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it.
Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed every-
thing and everybody he could think of, and then cussed
them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped
any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a
general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel
of people which he didn't know the names of, and so
called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and
went right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me.
He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come
any such game on him he knowed of a place six or
seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt
till they dropped and they couldn't find me. That
made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute;
I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that
chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the
things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of
corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a
four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted
up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of
the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned
I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take
to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't
stay in one place, but just tramp right across the
country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep
alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the
widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I
would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk
enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it
I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man
hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or
drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was
about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man
took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and
went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in
town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a
sight to look at. A body would a thought he was
Adam -- he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor
begun to work he most always went for the govment.
his time he says:

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see
what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take
a man's son away from him -- a man's own son, which
he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all
the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got
that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and
begin to do suthin' for HIM and give him a rest, the law
up and goes for him. And they call THAT govment!
That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge
Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my
property. Here's what the law does: The law takes a
man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams
him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him
go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They
call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a
govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to
just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I
TOLD 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots
of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I,
for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never
come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says
look at my hat -- if you call it a hat -- but the lid
raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below
my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more
like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-
pipe. Look at it, says I -- such a hat for me to wear
-- one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git
my rights.

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.
Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from
Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He
had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's
got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold
watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane -- the awful-
est old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do
you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college,
and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed
everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he
could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me
out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It
was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote
myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when
they told me there was a State in this country where
they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll
never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they
all heard me; and the country may rot for all me --
I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the
cool way of that nigger -- why, he wouldn't a give me
the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I
says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at
auction and sold? -- that's what I want to know. And
what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he
couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six months,
and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now --
that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't
sell a free nigger till he's been in the State six months.
Here's a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets
on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and
yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before
it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal,
white-shirted free nigger, and --"

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his
old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over
heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins,
and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of
language -- mostly hove at the nigger and the gov-
ment, though he give the tub some, too, all along,
here and there. He hopped around the cabin con-
siderable, first on one leg and then on the other, hold-
ing first one shin and then the other one, and at last he
let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched
the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment,
because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes
leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a
howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he
went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes;
and the cussing he done then laid over anything he
had ever done previous. He said so his own self after-
wards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his
best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I
reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had
enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium
tremens. That was always his word. I judged he
would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I
would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other.
He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his
blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. He
didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned
and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for
a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep
my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed
what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle
burning.

I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a
sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.
There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every
which way and yelling about snakes. He said they
was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a
jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the
cheek -- but I couldn't see no snakes. He started
and run round and round the cabin, hollering"Take
him off! take him off! he's biting me on the neck!"
I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty
soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting;
then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking
things every which way, and striking and grabbing at
the air with his hands, and screaming and saying there
was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by,
and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller,
and didn't make a sound. I could hear the owls and
the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terri-
ble still. He was laying over by the corner. By and
by he raised up part way and listened, with his head
to one side. He says, very low:

"Tramp -- tramp -- tramp; that's the dead; tramp
-- tramp -- tramp; they're coming after me; but I
won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me -- don't!
hands off -- they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil
alone!"

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off,
begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself
up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine
table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I
could hear him through the blanket.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet
looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He
chased me round and round the place with a clasp-
knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he
would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no
more. I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but
he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and
cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I
turned short and dodged under his arm he made a
grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders,
and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket
quick as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he
was all tired out, and dropped down with his back
against the door, and said he would rest a minute and
then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said
he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see
who was who.

So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the
old split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as I could,
not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I
slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded,
then I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing
towards pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to
stir. And how slow and still the time did drag along.