Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV. We judged that three nights' moored fetches to Cairo at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in and that was what we was after. We'd sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states and then be out of trouble. Well the second night of fog begun to come on and we made for a tall head to tie to,
for what it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog. But when I paddled ahead in the canoe with the line to make fast there weren't anything but little saplings to tie to. I passed the line round one of them right on the edge of the cut bank but there was a stiff current and the raft came booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most
a half a minute it seemed to me. And then there weren't no raft in sight. You couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grab the paddle and set her back a stroke but she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her. I got up and tried to untie her but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with her. As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy,
right down the toe head. That was all right as far as it went but the toe head weren't sixty yards long and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid white fog and had no more idea which way I was gone than a dead man. Thinks I. It won't do to paddle. First I know I'll run into the bank or a toe head or something. I gotta set still and float and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a
time. I whooped and listened. Away down there somewhere as I hears a small whoop and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it listening sharp to hear it again. Next time it come I see I weren't heading for it but heading away to the right of it and the next time I was heading away to the left of it and not gaining on it much either for I was flying around this way and that and the other but it was going straight ahead all the time.
I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time but he never did and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. Until I fought along and directly I hears the whoop behind me. I is tangled good now. Thou is somebody else's whoop or else I is turned around. I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again. It was behind me yet but in a different place. It kept coming
and kept changing its place and I kept answering till by and by it was in front of me again and I know the current had swung the canoe's head downstream and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog but nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog. The whooping went on and in about a minute I come a booming down on a cut back with smoky ghosts of big trees
on it and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that had been fairly roared. The current was tearing by them so swift. In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set perfectly still then listening to my heart thump and I reckon I didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut back was an island and Jim had gone down the
other side of it. It weren't no towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island. Must be five or six miles and more than half a mile wide. I kept quiet with my ears cocked about fifteen minutes I reckon. I was floating along of course four or five miles an hour but you don't ever think of that. No. You feel like you're laying dead still on the water and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you
don't think to yourself how fast you're going but you catch your breath and think my how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night you try it once. You'll see. Next for about a half an hour whoops now and then. At last I hear the answer a long ways off and try to follow it but I couldn't do it and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads for I had little
dim glimpses of them on both sides of me. Sometimes just a narrow channel between and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well I warn't long loosen the hoops down amongst the towheads and I only tried to chase them a little while anyway because it was worse than chasing a jack-o'-lantern. You never know to sound dodge round so and
swap places so quick and so much. I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river and so I judged the raft must be buttoned into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing. It was floating a little faster than I was. Well I seemed to be in the open river again by and by but I couldn't hear no sign of a whoop no where's. I reckon
Jim had fetched up on a snag maybe and it was all up with him. I was good and tired so I laid down the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to go to sleep of course but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it so I thought I'd take just one little cat nap. But I reckon it was more than a cat nap for when I waked up the stars were shining bright the fog was all gone and I was spinning down a big bend stern first. First I didn't
know where I was I thought I was dreaming and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim at last week. It was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars. I looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water I took after it but when I got to it it wasn't nothing but a couple of saw logs made fast together. Then
I see another speck and chase that then another and this time I was right it was the raft. When I got to it Jim was sitting there with his head down between his knees asleep with his right arm hanging over the staring oar. The other oar was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt so she had a rough time. I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose in the raft and began to gap and stretch my fist out against
Jim and says hello Jim have I been asleep why didn't you stir me up? Goodness gracious is that you Huck and you ain't dead you ain't drowned you's back again it's too good for true honey it's too good for true let me look at you child let me feel you you ain't dead you's back again living sound just the same old Huck the same old Huck thanks to goodness what's the matter with you Jim you been a drinking drinking has I been a drinking has
I had a chance to be a drinking well then what makes you so wild how does I talk wild how why ain't you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if I'd been gone away Huck Huck Finn you look me in the eye look me in the eye ain't you been gone away gone away why what in the nation do you mean I ain't been gone anywhere's where would I go to well look a here boss there's something wrong there is is I me or who is I is I here
or what is I now that's what I want to know well I think you're here plain enough but I think you're a tangled headed old fool Jim I is is I well you answer me this didn't you towed out the line in the canoe for the make-fans to the towhead no I didn't what towhead I ain't seen no towhead you ain't seen no towhead look a here didn't the line pull loose and the raft go a humming down the river and leave you in the canoe behind
in the fog what fog why the fog the fog that's been around all night and didn't you whoop and didn't I whoop till we got mixed up in the islands and one of us got lost and the other one was just as good as loss cause he didn't know what he was and didn't I bust up again a lot of them islands and have a terrible time and most get drowned it now ain't that so boss ain't it so you answer me that well this is too many for me Jim I
ain't seen no fog nor no islands nor no troubles nor nothing I been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago and I reckon I done the same you couldn't have got drunk in that time so of course you been dreaming dad fetch it how's I gonna dream all that in ten minutes well hang it you did dream it cause there didn't any of it happen but huck it's all just as plain to me as it don't make no difference
how plain it is there ain't nothing in it I know because I been here all the time Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes but sit there studying over it then he says well then I reckon I did dream it huck but dog my cats if it ain't the powerfulest dream I ever see and ain't been ever had no dream before that's tied me out like this one oh well that's all right because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes but
this one was a staving dream tell me all about it Jim so Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through just as it happened only he painted it up considerable then he said he must start in and interpret it because it was sent him for a warning he said the first toehead stood for a man that would try to do us some good but the current was another man that would get us away from him the whoops were warnings that would come to us every now and then and if we didn't try
hard to make out to understand them they just take us into bad luck instead of keeping us out of it the lot of toeheads was troubles we was going to get into with crossing people and all kinds of mean folks but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river which was the free states and wouldn't have no more trouble it had clouded up pretty dark just after I got onto the raft
but it was clearing up again now oh well that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes Jim I says but what does these things stand for it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed or you could see them first rate now Jim looked at the trash and then looked at me and back at the trash again he had got the dream fix so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into place again right away but when it did get the thing
straight in the route he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says what today stand for I's gonna tell you when I got all wore out with work and with the calling for you and went to sleep my heart was most broke because you was lost and I didn't kill no more what became of me and the raft and when I wake up and find you back again all safe and sound the tears come and I could have got down on my knees and kiss your foot I so thankful and all you was thinking about was
how you could make a fool of old Jim with a lie that truck down is trash and trash is what people is that puts dirt in the head of their friends and make them ashamed then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that but that was enough it made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back it was 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a Negro but I'd done it and I weren't
ever sorry for it afterwards neither I didn't do him no more mean tricks and I wouldn't done that one if I didn't know that would make him feel that way end of chapter 15 recording by Bob Sage
