LAND

WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn’t come

to no agreement. Me and Jim was for turning

around and going back home, but Tom allowed that

by the time daylight come, so we could see our way,

we would be so far toward England that we might as

well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the

glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come

out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the

lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again

till sun-up. The sea was sparkling like di’monds, and

it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all

dry again.

We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first

thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning

in a compass back there under a hood. Then Tom was

disturbed. He says:

“You know what that means, easy enough. It

means that somebody has got to stay on watch and

steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she’ll

wander around and go wherever the wind wants her

to.”

“Well,” I says, “what’s she been doing since —

er — since we had the accident?”

“Wandering,” he says, kinder troubled —” wandering, without any doubt. She’s in a wind now that’s

blowing her south of east. We don’t know how long

that’s been going on, either.”

So then he p’inted her east, and said he would hold

her there till we rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body could want; he

couldn’t ‘a’ been better fixed. There wasn’t no milk

for the coffee, but there was water, and everything

else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the

fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches; and

wine and liquor, which warn’t in our line; and books,

and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs,

and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads

and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that

he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was

money, too. Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to

steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches,

turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I

took his place, and he got out the professor’s papers

and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated

it “IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND,” and folded

it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and

directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big

writing, “FROM TOM SAWYER, THE ERRONORT,” and said

it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when

it come along in the mail. I says:

“Tom Sawyer, this ain’t no welkin, it’s a balloon.”

“Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?”

“You’ve wrote it on the letter, anyway.”

“What of it? That don’t mean that the balloon’s

the welkin.”

“Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a

welkin?”

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and

scraped around in his mind, but he couldn’t find nothing, so he had to say:

“I don’t know, and nobody don’t know. It’s just

a word, and it’s a mighty good word, too. There

ain’t many that lays over it. I don’t believe there’s

ANY that does.”

“Shucks!” I says. “But what does it MEAN? —

that’s the p’int. “

“I don’t know what it means, I tell you. It’s a

word that people uses for — for — well, it’s orna-mental. They don’t put ruffles on a shirt to keep a

person warm, do they?”

“Course they don’t.”

“But they put them ON, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and

the welkin’s the ruffle on it.”

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

“Now, Mars Tom, it ain’t no use to talk like dat;

en, moreover, it’s sinful. You knows a letter ain’t no

shirt, en dey ain’t no ruffles on it, nuther. Dey ain’t

no place to put ‘em on; you can’t put em on, and

dey wouldn’t stay ef you did.”

“Oh DO shut up, and wait till something’s started

that you know something about.”

“Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can’t mean to say I

don’t know about shirts, when, goodness knows, I’s

toted home de washin’ ever sence —”

“I tell you, this hasn’t got anything to do with

shirts. I only —”

“Why, Mars Tom, you said yo’self dat a letter —”

“Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I

only used it as a metaphor.”

That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then

Jim says — rather timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:

“Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?”

“A metaphor’s a — well, it’s a — a — a metaphor’s

an illustration.” He see THAT didn’t git home, so he

tried again. “When I say birds of a feather flocks

together, it’s a metaphorical way of saying —”

“But dey DON’T, Mars Tom. No, sir, ‘deed dey

don’t. Dey ain’t no feathers dat’s more alike den a

bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches

dem birds together, you’ll —”

“Oh, give us a rest! You can’t get the simplest

little thing through your thick skull. Now don’t bother

me any more.”

Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased

with himself for catching Tom out. The minute Tom

begun to talk about birds I judged he was a goner,

because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us

put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and

hundreds of them, and that’s the way to find out

about birds. That’s the way people does that writes

books about birds, and loves them so that they’ll

go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to

find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself,

because I always loved birds and creatures; and I

started out to learn how to be one, and I see a bird

setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head

tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I

fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down

from the limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked

him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my

hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like

his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin

over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side

of his head; and, laws! I couldn’t see nothing more

for the tears; and I hain’t never murdered no creature

since that warn’t doing me no harm, and I ain’t going

to.

But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted

to know. I got the subject up again, and then Tom

explained, the best he could. He said when a person

made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of

the people made the welkin ring. He said they always

said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so

he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well,

that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and

said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good

humor again, and he says:

“Well, it’s all right, then; and we’ll let bygones

be bygones. I don’t know for certain what a welkin

is, but when we land in London we’ll make it ring,

anyway, and don’t you forget it.”

He said an erronort was a person who sailed around

in balloons; and said it was a mighty sight finer to be

Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom Sawyer the

Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the

world, if we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn’t

give shucks to be a traveler now.

Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and we felt pretty good, too, and

proud; and we kept watching with the glasses, like

Columbus discovering America. But we couldn’t see

nothing but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the

sun shut down, and still there warn’t no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but

reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on

steering east, but went up on a higher level so we

wouldn’t hit any steeples or mountains in the dark.

It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim’s;

but Tom stayed up, because he said ship captains done

that when they was making the land, and didn’t stand

no regular watch.

Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we

jumped up and looked over, and there was the land

sure enough — land all around, as far as you could see,

and perfectly level and yaller. We didn’t know how

long we’d been over it. There warn’t no trees, nor

hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and Tom and Jim had took

it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead

ca’m; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had

been the sea and rough, it would ‘a’ looked smooth, all

the same, in the night, that way.

We was all in a powerful excitement now, and

grabbed the glasses and hunted everywheres for London, but couldn’t find hair nor hide of it, nor any

other settlement — nor any sign of a lake or a river,

either. Tom was clean beat. He said it warn’t his

notion of England; he thought England looked like

America, and always had that idea. So he said we

better have breakfast, and then drop down and inquire

the quickest way to London. We cut the breakfast

pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted

along down, the weather began to moderate, and

pretty soon we shed our furs. But it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was ‘most too

moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!

We settled down to within thirty foot of the land —

that is, it was land if sand is land; for this wasn’t anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb down the

ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt

amazing good — that is, the stretching did, but the

sand scorched our feet like hot embers. Next, we see

somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we

heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly

dancing, and making signs, and yelling. We couldn’t

make out what he said, but we was scared anyway, and

begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got

close enough, we understood the words, and they

made me sick:

“Run! Run fo’ yo’ life! Hit’s a lion; I kin see

him thoo de glass! Run, boys; do please heel it de

bes’ you kin. He’s bu’sted outen de menagerie, en

dey ain’t nobody to stop him!”

It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of

my legs. I could only just gasp along the way you do

in a dream when there’s a ghost gaining on you.

Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and

waited for me; and as soon as I got a foothold on it

he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim had clean

lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom

shinned along up and told me to follow; but the lion

was arriving, fetching a most ghastly roar with every

lope, and my legs shook so I dasn’t try to take one of

them out of the rounds for fear the other one would

give way under me.

But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the

balloon up a little, and stopped it again as soon as the

end of the ladder was ten or twelve feet above ground.

And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me,

and roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder,

and only missing it about a quarter of an inch, it

seemed to me. It was delicious to be out of his reach,

perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all up one side; but I was hanging there helpless

and couldn’t climb, and that made me feel perfectly

wretched and miserable all down the other. It is most

seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is

not to be recommended, either.

Tom asked me what he’d better do, but I didn’t

know. He asked me if I could hold on whilst he sailed

away to a safe place and left the lion behind. I said I

could if he didn’t go no higher than he was now; but

if he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure.

So he said, “Take a good grip,” and he started.

“Don’t go so fast,” I shouted. “It makes my

head swim.”

He had started like a lightning express. He slowed

down, and we glided over the sand slower, but still in

a kind of sickening way; for it IS uncomfortable to see

things sliding and gliding under you like that, and not

a sound.

But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the

lion was catching up. His noise fetched others. You

could see them coming on the lope from every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of

them under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling

and snapping at each other; and so we went skimming

along over the sand, and these fellers doing what they

could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then

some other beasts come, without an invite, and they

started a regular riot down there.

We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn’t ever

git away from them at this gait, and I couldn’t hold on

forever. So Tom took a think, and struck another

idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box

revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped

to fight over the carcass. So he stopped the balloon

still, and done it, and then we sailed off while the fuss

was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off,

and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was

out of reach again, that gang was on hand once more.

And when they see we was really gone and they

couldn’t get us, they sat down on their hams and

looked up at us so kind of disappointed that it was as

much as a person could do not to see THEIR side of the

matter.

CHAPTER VI.

IT’S A CARAVAN

I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a

chance to lay down, so I made straight for my

locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a

body couldn’t get back his strength in no such oven as

that, so Tom give the command to soar, and Jim

started her aloft.

We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just

right, and pretty soon I was all straight again. Tom

had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps

up and says:

“I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are.

We’re in the Great Sahara, as sure as guns!”

He was so excited he couldn’t hold still; but I

wasn’t. I says:

“Well, then, where’s the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?”

“‘Tain’t in either; it’s in Africa.”

Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down

with no end of interest, because that was where his

originals come from; but I didn’t more than half believe it. I couldn’t, you know; it seemed too awful

far away for us to have traveled.

But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it,

and said the lions and the sand meant the Great Desert,

sure. He said he could ‘a’ found out, before we

sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if he had thought of one thing; and when we

asked him what, he said:

“These clocks. They’re chronometers. You always read about them in sea voyages. One of them

is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping St.

Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it

was four in the afternoon by my watch and this clock,

and it was ten at night by this Grinnage clock. Well,

at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven

o’clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening

when the sun went down, and it was half-past five

o’clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 11 A.M.

by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun

rose and set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast; but we’ve come so far

east that it comes within less than half an hour of setting by the Grinnage clock now, and I’m away out —

more than four hours and a half out. You see, that

meant that we was closing up on the longitude of

Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was

p’inted right — which we wasn’t. No, sir, we’ve been

a-wandering — wandering ‘way down south of east, and

it’s my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map.

You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the

west. Think how fast we’ve traveled; if we had gone

straight east we would be long past England by this

time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we’ll stand

up, and when we can’t cast a shadow we’ll find that

this Grinnage clock is coming mighty close to marking

twelve. Yes, sir, I think we’re in Africa; and it’s just

bully.”

Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his

head and says:

“Mars Tom, I reckon dey’s a mistake som’er’s.

hain’t seen no niggers yit.”

“That’s nothing; they don’t live in the desert.

What is that, ‘way off yonder? Gimme a glass.”

He took a long look, and said it was like a black

string stretched across the sand, but he couldn’t guess

what it was.

“Well,” I says, “I reckon maybe you’ve got a

chance now to find out whereabouts this balloon is,

because as like as not that is one of these lines here,

that’s on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and we can drop down and look at its number,

and —”

“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunk-head as you. Did you s’pose there’s meridians of

longitude on the EARTH?”

“Tom Sawyer, they’re set down on the map, and

you know it perfectly well, and here they are, and you

can see for yourself.”

“Of course they’re on the map, but that’s nothing;

there ain’t any on the GROUND.”

“Tom, do you know that to be so?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, then, that map’s a liar again. I never see

such a liar as that map.”

He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and

Jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute

we’d ‘a’ broke loose on another argument, if Tom

hadn’t dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands

like a maniac and sing out:

“Camels! — Camels!”

So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look,

but I was disappointed, and says:

“Camels your granny; they’re spiders.”

“Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking

in a procession? You don’t ever reflect, Huck Finn,

and I reckon you really haven’t got anything to

reflect WITH. Don’t you know we’re as much as a

mile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is

two or three miles away? Spiders, good land! Spiders

as big as a cow? Perhaps you’d like to go down

and milk one of ‘em. But they’re camels, just the

same. It’s a caravan, that’s what it is, and it’s a mile

long.”

“Well, then, let’s go down and look at it. I

don’t believe in it, and ain’t going to till I see it and

know it.”

“All right,” he says, and give the command:

“Lower away.”

As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we

could see that it was camels, sure enough, plodding

along, an everlasting string of them, with bales strapped

to them, and several hundred men in long white robes,

and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and

hanging down with tassels and fringes; and some of

the men had long guns and some hadn’t, and some

was riding and some was walking. And the weatherJ—

well, it was just roasting. And how slow they did

creep along! We swooped down now, all of a

sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their

heads.

The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat

on their stomachs, some begun to fire their guns at us,

and the rest broke and scampered every which way,

and so did the camels.

We see that we was making trouble, so we went up

again about a mile, to the cool weather, and watched

them from there. It took them an hour to get together

and form the procession again; then they started along,

but we could see by the glasses that they wasn’t pay-ing much attention to anything but us. We poked

along, looking down at them with the glasses, and by

and by we see a big sand mound, and something like

people the other side of it, and there was something

like a man laying on top of the mound that raised his

head up every now and then, and seemed to be watching the caravan or us, we didn’t know which. As the

caravan got nearer, he sneaked down on the other side

and rushed to the other men and horses — for that is

what they was — and we see them mount in a hurry;

and next, here they come, like a house afire, some with

lances and some with long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could.

They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the

next minute both sides crashed together and was all

mixed up, and there was such another popping of guns

as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke

you could only catch glimpses of them struggling

together. There must ‘a’ been six hundred men in

that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then they

broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and

nail, and scurrying and scampering around, and laying

into each other like everything; and whenever the

smoke cleared a little you could see dead and wounded

people and camels scattered far and wide and all about,

and camels racing off in every direction.

At last the robbers see they couldn’t win, so their

chief sounded a signal, and all that was left of them

broke away and went scampering across the plain.

The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it

off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run

screaming and begging after him, and followed him

away off across the plain till she was separated a long

ways from her people; but it warn’t no use, and she

had to give it up, and we see her sink down on the

sand and cover her face with her hands. Then Tom

took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and we

come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked

him out of the saddle, child and all; and he was jarred

considerable, but the child wasn’t hurt, but laid there

working its hands and legs in the air like a tumble-bug

that’s on its back and can’t turn over. The man went

staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn’t know

what had hit him, for we was three or four hundred

yards up in the air by this time.

We judged the woman would go and get the child

now; but she didn’t. We could see her, through the

glass, still setting there, with her head bowed down on

her knees; so of course she hadn’t seen the perform-ance, and thought her child was clean gone with the

man. She was nearly a half a mile from her people,

so we thought we might go down to the child, which

was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake

it to her before the caravan people could git to us to

do us any harm; and besides, we reckoned they had

enough business on their hands for one while, anyway,

with the wounded. We thought we’d chance it, and

we did. We swooped down and stopped, and Jim

shinned down the ladder and fetched up the kid, which

was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor,

too, considering it was just out of a battle and been

tumbled off of a horse; and then we started for the

mother, and stopped back of her and tolerable near

by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when

he was close back of her the child goo-goo’d, the way

a child does, and she heard it, and whirled and fetched

a shriek of joy, and made a jump for the kid and

snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged

Jim, and then snatched off a gold chain and hung it

around Jim’s neck, and hugged him again, and jerked

up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all the

time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and

in a minute we was back up in the sky and the woman

was staring up, with the back of her head between her

shoulders and the child with its arms locked around

her neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in

sight a-sailing away in the sky.

CHAPTER VII.