Orakel Classics
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, prepared as a public-domain Orakel edition with 42 chapter-aware companion links.
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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
Open2CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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
Open3CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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 a while 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.
Open4CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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,
Open5CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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
Open6CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 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
Open7CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. He
Open8CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o’clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the
Open9CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I’d found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile
Open10CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a-ha’nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn’t say no more; but I couldn’t keep from studying over it and
Open11CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “No’m. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I’ve walked all the way and I’m all tired
Open12CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It must a been close on to one o’clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn’t come, for we hadn’t ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn’t
Open13CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Well, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that! But it warn’t no time to be sentimentering. We’d got to find that boat now—had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too—seemed a week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn’t believe he could go any further—so scared he hadn’t hardly
Open14CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By-and-by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of seegars. We hadn’t ever been this rich before in neither of our lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good
Open15CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of
Open16CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. There was a power of style about her. It amounted to something being a
Open17CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out, and
Open18CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn’t no more quality than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very
Open19CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there—sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up—nearly always in the dead water under a tow-head; and then cut young cottonwoods
Open20CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running—was Jim a runaway nigger? Says
Open21CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn’t tie up. The king and the duke turned out by-and-by looking pretty rusty; but after they’d jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and
Open22CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They swarmed up towards Sherburn’s house, a-whooping and raging like Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along the road was full of women’s heads, and there was nigger boys in every tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as
Open23CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most
Open24CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Next day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow tow-head out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn’t take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we
Open25CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. The windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a
Open26CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Well, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley—meaning
Open27CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I crept to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed along, and got down stairs all right. There warn’t a sound anywheres. I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but
Open28CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXVIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By-and-by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it—getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody
Open29CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXIX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn’t see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. I reckoned they’d turn pale. But no, nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just
Open30CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “Quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or I’ll shake the insides out o’
Open31CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We dasn’t stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun
Open32CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering—spirits that’s been dead ever so many years—and
Open33CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along. I says “Hold on!” and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that’s got a dry throat, and then
Open34CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXIV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! I bet I know where Jim
Open35CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXV. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down into the woods; because Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that’s called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down
Open36CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there
Open37CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of
Open38CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Making them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That’s the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have it; Tom said he’d got to; there warn’t no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of
Open39CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XXXIX. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would
Open40CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XL. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn’t know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was, and never
Open41CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLI. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we
Open42CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLII. from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn’t get no track of Tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. And by-and-by the old man
Open