Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0133/01336.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 19KB | 343 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01336}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
What Royalty Did To Parkville}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{duke
come
jim
king
says
way
little
too
away
didn't}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

What Royalty Did To Parkville

     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 - way Jim a runaway nigger?  Says I:

     "Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run south?"

     No, they allowed he wouldn't.  I had to account for things some way, so
I says:

     My folks was living in Pike Country, in Missouri, where I was born, and
they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike.  Pa, he 'lowed he'd break
up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little one-horse place on
the river forty-four mile below Orleans.  Pa was pretty poor, and had some
debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars
and our nigger, Jim.  That warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile,
deck passage nor no other way.  Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of
luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to
Orleans on it.  Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard
corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the
wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four
years old, so they never come up no more.  Well, for the next day or two we
had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and
trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway
nigger.  We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us.

     The duke says:

     "Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  I'll think the thing over - I'll invent a plan that'll fix it.
We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that
town yonder in daylight - it mightn't be healthy."

     Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the
heat-lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was
beginning to shiver - it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see
that.  So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what
the beds was like.  My bed was a straw tick - better than Jim's, which was a
corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they
poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you
was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you
wake up.  Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed
he wouldn't.  He says:

     "I should 'a' reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you
that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on.  Your Grace 'll
take the shuck bed yourself."

     Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was
going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the
duke says:

     "'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel
of oppression.  Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I
submit; 'tis my fate.  I am alone in the world - let me suffer; I can bear
it."

     We got away as soon as it was good and dark.  The king told us to stand
well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a
long ways below the town.  We come in sight of the little bunch of lights by
and by - that was the town, you know - and slid by, about a half a mile out,
all right.  When we was three-quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our
signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder
and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till
the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and
turned in for the night.  It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't
'a' turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm
as that every day in the week, not by a long sight.  My souls, how the wind
did scream along!  And every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up
the white-caps for a half a mile around and you'd see the islands looking
dusty through the rain and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes
a h-whack! - bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum - and the thunder
would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit - and then rip comes another
flash and another sock-dolager.  The waves most washed me off the raft
sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind.  We didn't have no
trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so
constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way
or that and miss them.

     I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time,
so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always
mighty good that way, Jim was.  I crawled into the wigwam, but the king and
the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for me; so I
laid outside - I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves
warn't running so high now.  About two they come up again, though, and Jim
was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he reckoned they
warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for
pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me
overboard.  It most killed Jim a-laughing.  He was the easiest nigger to
laugh that ever was, anyway.

     I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by
the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed I
rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding-quarters for the day.

     The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and
the duke played seven-up awhile, five cents a game.  Then they got tired of
it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it.  The duke
went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little printed bills
and read them out loud.  One bill said, "The celebrated Dr. Armand de
Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on the Science of Phrenology," at such
and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten cents admission, and
"furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents apiece."  The duke said
that was him.  In another bill he was the "world-renowned Shakespearian
tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane, London."  In other bills he
had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water
and gold with a "diving-rod," "dissipating witch spells," and so on.  By and
by he says:

     "But the histrionic muse is the darling.  Have you ever trod the boards,
Royalty?"

     "No," says the king.

     "You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says
the duke.  "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the
sword-fight in 'Richard III,' and the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.'
How does that strike you?"

     "I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you
see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of it.
I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace.  Do you reckon you
can learn me?"

     "Easy!"

     "All right.  I'm just a-freezin' for something fresh, anyway.  Le's
commence right away."

     So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and
said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.

     "But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my whit
whiskers in goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe."

     "No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the difference in
the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight before she goes to
bed, and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap.  Here are the
costumes for the parts."

     He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was
meedyevil armor for Richard III and t'other chap, and a long white cotton
nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match.  The king was satisfied; so the
duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid
spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show how it
had got to be done; then he gives the book to the king and told him to get
his part by heart.

     There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in
daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would go down
to the town and fix that thing.  The king allowed he would go, too, and see
if he couldn't strike something.  We was out of coffee, so Jim said I better
go along with them in the canoe and get some.

     When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday.  We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or too
sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods.
The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that camp-meeting
for all it was worth, and I might go, too.

     The duke said what he was after was a printing-office.  We found it; a
little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter-shop - carpenters and printers
all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked.  It was a dirty, littered-up
place, and had ink-marks, and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway
niggers on them, all over the walls.  The duke shed his coat and said he was
all right now.  So me and the king lit out for the camp-meeting.

     We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most
awful hot day.  There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile
around.  The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywhere, feeding
out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies.  There was sheds
made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and
gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like
truck.

     The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was
bigger and held crowds of people.  The benches was made out of outside slabs
of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs.
They didn't have no backs.  The preachers had high platforms to stand on at
one end of the sheds.  The women had on sun-bonnets; and some had
linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on
calico.  Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children
didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt.  Some of the old women
was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly.

     The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn.  He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there
was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out
two more for them to sing - and so on.  The people woke up more and more, and
sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some
begun to shout.  Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest,
too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other,
and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body
going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every
now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass
it around this way and that, shouting, "It's the brazen serpent in the
wilderness!  Look upon it and live!"  And the people would shout out, "Glory
- A-a-men!"  And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying
amen:

     "Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (amen!) come,
sick and sore! (amen!) come, lame and halt and blind! (amen!) come, pore and
needy, sunk in shame (a-a-men!) come, all that's worn and soiled and
suffering! - come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in
your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of
heaven stands open - oh, enter in and be at rest!" (a-a-men! glory, glory
hallelujah!)

     And so on.  You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying.  Folks got up everywheres in the crowd,
and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, with the
tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to
the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down
on the straw, just crazy and wild.

     Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up onto the platform, and the
preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it.  He told them
he was a pirate - been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian
Ocean - and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight,
and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he'd
been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and
he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him,
because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life;
and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back
to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the
pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else,
being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would
take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway,
and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, "Don't you thank
me, don't you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in
Pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and
that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!"

     And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody.  Then somebody
sings out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!"  Well, a
half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let him pass the
hat around!"  Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

     So the king went all through the crowd with his hat, swabbing his eyes,
and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good
to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind
of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him
would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and
some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times - and he was
invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and
said they'd think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of
the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get
to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.

     When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had
collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents.  And then he had
fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon
when he was starting home through the woods.  The king said, take it all
around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying line.  He
said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks alongside of
pirates to work a camp-meeting with.

     The duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well till the king come to
show up, but after that he didn't think so so much.  He had set up and
printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing office - horse bills
- and took the money, four dollars.  And he had got in ten dollars' worth of
advertisements for the paper, which he said he would put in for four dollars
if they would pay in advance - so they done it.  The price of the paper was
two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar
apiece on condition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in
cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and
knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it
for cash.  He set up a little piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of
his own head - three verses - kind of sweet and saddish - the name of it was,
"Yes, crush, cold world, this breaking heart" - and he left that all set up
and ready to print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it.  Well, he
took in nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's
work for it.

     Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged
for, because it was for us.  It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a
bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it.  The reading
was all about Jim and just described him to a dot.  It said he run away from
St. Jacques's plantation, forty miles below New Orleans, last winter, and
likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him back he could
have the reward and expenses.

     "Now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we
want to.  Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot with a
rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured
him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this
little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward.
Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldn't go well
with the story of us being so poor.  Too much like jewelry.  Ropes are the
correct thing - we must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards."

     We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble
about running daytimes.  We judged we could make miles enough that night to
get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the
printing-office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom
right along if we wanted to.

     We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten
o'clock; then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist
our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.

     When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:

     "Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis
trip?"

     "No," I says, "I reckon not."

     "Well," says he, "dat's all right, den.  I doan' mine one er two kings,
but dat's enough.  Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much better."

     I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear
what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and had so
much trouble, he'd forgot it.