Tom Sawyer Abroad

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Tom Sawyer Abroad


Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:

"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"

"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."

"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no respec'
for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve
it, dat's certain."

"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to
do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing
and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener,
in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That
flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more
prevent it than you can prevent lightning."

"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,
I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."

"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur,
man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all.
People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's,
and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two
or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can come anywhere
near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very
particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or
whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so.
There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of
them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."

"Mars Tom!"

"It's so; I ain't joking."

"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but
there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always
been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them
as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.

We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for
the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed
down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to
feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So
we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most
noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes
stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.

It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find
land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean over it.
We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want
to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as
if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making
me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want
to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something
else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up
here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to
eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and
no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over
the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and
it's such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.

We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see.
The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see
a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of
ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have.

Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:

"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"

And the man says:

"Was he blind in his left eye?"

"Yes."

"Had he lost an upper front tooth?"

"Yes."

"Was his off hind leg lame?"

"Yes."

"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"

"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details--that's the one, and I'm
in a hurry. Where did you see him?"

"I hain't seen him at all," the man says.

"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"

"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a
camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in
his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,
and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because
he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had
lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his
teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side--the ants
told me that; the honey leaked out on the other--the flies told me that.
I know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."

Jim says:

"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."

"That's all," Tom says.

"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"

"I don't know."

"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"

"No."

Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:

"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no
IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"

"No, I haven't."

I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and
the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's
fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he
whirls on me and says:

"What do YOU think of the tale?"

Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did
seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped
square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth
the trouble of telling.

Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I reckoned
he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad;
and he says:

"Some people can see, and some can't--just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the
track."

I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of
his irrulevances, I reckon--he was full of them, sometimes, when he was
in a close place and couldn't see no other way out--but I didn't mind.
We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git
away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I
reckon, much as he tried not to let on.



CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE

WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the
desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't
high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the
desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting
toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.

We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and
now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was
stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost
right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about,
perfectly quiet, like they was asleep.

We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see
that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush
down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow
and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was
men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and
shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books.
And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just
like they was asleep.

Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of
them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard.
Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it
tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying
there for years.

Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl
belts with long, silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had
their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to
the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We
took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and
then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that
we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would
blow away again, of course.

Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on
the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around
and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death;
but Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and
so that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we
wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.

Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes
made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We
wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but
Tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of
robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on
us for putting the temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished
we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all
left.

We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful
thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water, but it
was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald
your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water, the
best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would
help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we hadn't
been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost
people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink,
we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a
minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open
and pant like a dog.

Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours--three hours--just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see
the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know
what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain
he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't
stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker,
and give it up.

But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and
shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the
water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything
look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we
just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like
a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she
was gone!

Tom's eyes took a spread, and he says:

"Boys, it was a MYridge!" Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing
to be glad about. I says:

"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is,
what's become of it?"

Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:

"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."

"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"

He looked me over and says:

"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"

"No, I don't. What is it?"

"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it."

It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:

"What's the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn't I see
the lake?"

"Yes--you think you did."

"I don't think nothing about it, I DID see it."

"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either--because it warn't there to see."

It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of
pleading and distressed:

"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You
ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us--same way like Anna
Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah--I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you en
Huck dis minute."

I says:

"Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW,
then!"

"Yes, Mars Tom, hit's so--you can't deny it. We all seen it, en dat PROVE
it was dah."

"Proves it! How does it prove it?"

"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might
be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might,
maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's
SO. Dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom."

"I don't know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand
million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the
other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?"

"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body
'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now--a sailin'
thoo de sky, like she allays done."

Tom turned on me, then, and says:

"What do YOU say--is the sun standing still?"

"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that
ain't blind can see it don't stand still."

"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of
low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a
university did three or four hundred years ago."

It warn't fair play, and I let him know it. I says:

"Throwin' mud ain't arguin', Tom Sawyer."

"Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled
Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?"

Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert,
perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says:

"I reckon you're satisfied now, Tom Sawyer."

But he says, perfectly ca'm:

"Yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there."

Jim says:

"DON'T talk so, Mars Tom--it sk'yers me to hear you. It's so hot, en
you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but
don't she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we
gits dah, I's SO thirsty."

"Well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because
there ain't no lake there, I tell you."

I says:

"Jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and I won't, either."

"'Deed I won't; en bless you, honey, I couldn't ef I wanted to."

We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it--and all of a sudden it was
gone again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he
says, gasping like a fish:

"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de
ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de
danger we's in."

"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!"

He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to
starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you
go."

We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out
after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and
when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."

Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:

"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to die,
'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."

He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because I
knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then
I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and
go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of
these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it
for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that
knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they
are.

So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By
and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:

"NOW get up and look, you sapheads."

We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!--clear,
and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable--enough to make a body cry, it was so
beautiful.

Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a
lot, and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that
ever begun with that water.

Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness
around.

"Lions a-comin'!--lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo' life, Huck!"

Oh, and didn't we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off--he always done it
whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the
ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he
turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in
the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he
was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next;
so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was
drifting off on the wind.

But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down,
and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and
things?

But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down
to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the
center, and sung out:

"Leggo, and drop!"

I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:

"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."

I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a'
come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got
tuckered out and fell.

And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying
to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of
them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting
and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was
which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was
dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around
on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others
looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and
have some fun, but which we didn't want any.

As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them was
inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there
was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk
and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big
enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came
across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats
and things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and
Jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a
suit or two down for us that would answer.



CHAPTER IX. TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT

STILL, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another
errand. Most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the
new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you
fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular
and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down
into the lion market and see how we could make out there.