Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Part 40

"Journal your granny?_Jim_ can't write."

"S'pose he _can't_ write?he can make marks on the s.h.i.+rt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-hoop?"

"Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too."

"_Prisoners_ don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. They _always_ make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old bra.s.s candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. _They_ wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it. It ain't regular."

"Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?"

"Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too."

"Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan."

"That ain't nothing; we can get him some."

"Can't n.o.body _read_ his plates."

"That ain't got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn. All _he's_ got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't _have_ to be able to read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else."

"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?"

"Why, blame it all, it ain't the _prisoner's_ plates."

"But it's _somebody's_ plates, ain't it?"

"Well, spos'n it is? What does the _prisoner_ care whose?"

He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we cleared out for the house.

Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white s.h.i.+rt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and n.o.body don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and n.o.body but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the n.i.g.g.e.r-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the n.i.g.g.e.rs a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we _needed_. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was.

He said if I'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and n.o.body in sight around the yard; then Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. He says:

"Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed."

"Tools?" I says.

"Yes."

"Tools for what?"

"Why, to dig with. We ain't a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?"

"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a n.i.g.g.e.r out with?" I says.

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

"Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?

Now I want to ask you?if you got any reasonableness in you at all?what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels?why, they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king."

"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?"

"A couple of case-knives."

"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"

"Yes."

"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."

"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the _right_ way?and it's the regular way. And there ain't no _other_ way, that ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife?and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Ma.r.s.eilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?"

"I don't know."

"Well, guess."

"I don't know. A month and a half."

"_Thirty-seven year_?and he come out in China. _That's_ the kind. I wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock."

"_Jim_ don't know n.o.body in China."

"What's _that_ got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to the main point?"

"All right?I don't care where he comes out, so he _comes_ out; and Jim don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anyway?Jim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last."

"Yes he will _last_, too. You don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?"

"How long will it take, Tom?"

"Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans.

He'll hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can s.n.a.t.c.h him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon that 'll be the best way."

"Now, there's _sense_ in that," I says. "Letting on don't cost nothing; letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I don't mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn't strain me none, after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives."

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

"Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," I says, "there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smoke-house."

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

"It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch the knives?three of them." So I done it.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.