



Produced by David Widger





HUCKLEBERRY FINN

By Mark Twain

Part 4.



CHAPTER XVI.

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had
four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty
men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open
camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.  There was a
power of style about her.  It AMOUNTED to something being a raftsman on
such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got
hot.  The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both
sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light.  We talked
about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it.  I
said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but about a
dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how
was we going to know we was passing a town?  Jim said if the two big
rivers joined together there, that would show.  But I said maybe we might
think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old
river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too.  So the question was, what
to do?  I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell
them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green
hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo.  Jim
thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.

There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and
not pass it without seeing it.  He said he'd be mighty sure to see it,
because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom.  Every
little while he jumps up and says:

"Dah she is?"

But it warn't.  It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set
down again, and went to watching, same as before.  Jim said it made him
all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can
tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,
because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free--and who
was to blame for it?  Why, ME.  I couldn't get that out of my conscience,
no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't
stay still in one place.  It hadn't ever come home to me before, what
this thing was that I was doing