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 wide.
This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge
about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the
top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick. We
tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found
a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the
side towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or
three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up
straight in it. It was cool in there. Jim was for putting
our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't want
to be climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and
had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if
anybody was to come to the island, and they would never
find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them little
birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the
things to get wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up
abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there.
Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in,
amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the
lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for
dinner.
The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a
hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck
out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build
a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat
our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at
the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up, and
begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right
about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like
all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was
one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark
that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and
the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees
off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby; and here
would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down
and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a
perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the
branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild;
and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest
— FST! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a
little glimpse of treetops a-plunging about away off
yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you
could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now
you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and
then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky
towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty
barrels down stairs — where it's long stairs and they
bounce a good deal, you know.
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I
wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along
another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben
for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any
dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would,
honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do
de birds, chile."
The river went on raising and raising for ten or
twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The
water was three or four foot deep on the island in the
low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it
was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it
was the same old distance across — a half a mile —
because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe,
It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if
the sun was blazing outside. We went winding in and out
amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung so thick
we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every
old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and
such things; and when the island had been overflowed a
day or two they got so tame, on account of being hungry,
that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them
if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles — they
would slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in
was full of them. We could a had pets enough if we'd
wanted them.
One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft
— nice pine planks. It was twelve foot wide and about
fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top stood above
water six or seven inches — a solid, level floor. We
could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but
we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of the
island, just before daylight, here comes a frame-house
down, on the west side. She was a two-story, and tilted
over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard — clumb
in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet,
so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for
daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to the foot of
the island. Then we looked in at the window. We could
make out a bed, and a table, and two old chairs, and lots
of things around about on the floor, and there was
clothes hanging against the wall. There was something
laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a
man. So Jim says:
"Hello, you!"
But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim
says:
"De man ain't asleep — he's dead. You hold still
— I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and says:
"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's
ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three
days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face — it's
too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags
over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see
him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around
over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of
masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was
the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with
charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a
sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against
the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot
into the canoe — it might come good. There was a boy's
old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too.
And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it
had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the
bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest,
and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood
open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any
account. The way things was scattered about we reckoned
the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to
carry off most of their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without
any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in
any store, and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin
candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old
bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and
pins and beeswax and buttons and thread and all such
truck in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a fishline
as thick as my little finger with some monstrous hooks on
it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and
a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have
no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a
tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old
fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was broke off of
it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though
it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and
we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all
around.
And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When
we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile
below the island, and it was pretty broad day; so I made
Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt,
because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a
good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and
drifted down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the
dead water under the bank, and hadn't no accidents and
didn't see nobody. We got home all safe.