“That ain’t got anything to _do_ with it, Huck Finn.All _he’s_ got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out.You don’t _have_ to be able to read it. Why,half the time you can’t read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else.”
“Well, then, what’s the sense in wasting the plates?”
“Why, blame it all, it ain’t the _prisoner’s_ plates.”
“But it’s _somebody’s_ plates, ain’t it?”
“Well, spos’n it is?What does the _prisoner_ care whose—”
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing.So we cleared out for the house.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn’t borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don’t care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don’t blame them for it, either. It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we _needed_. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with; there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.
Well, as I was saying,we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business,and nobody in sight around the yard;then Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By-and-by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. He says:
“Everything’s all right now except tools;and that’s easy fixed.”
“Tools?” I says.
“Yes.”
“Tools for what?”
“Why, to dig with. We ain’t a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?”
“Ain’t them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a nigger out with?” I says.
He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:
“Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels,and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at all—what kind of a show would _that_ give him to be a hero?Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it.Picks and shovels—why,they wouldn’t furnish ’em to a king.”
“Well, then,” I says,“if we don’t want the picks and shovels, what do we want?”
“A couple of case-knives.”
“To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?”
“Yes.”
“Confound it, it’s foolish, Tom.”
“It don’t make no difference how foolish it is,it’s the _right_ way—and it’s the regular way.And there ain’t no _other_ way, that ever _I_ heard of,and I’ve read all the books that gives any information about these things.They always dig out with a case-knife—and not through dirt,mind you; generly it’s through solid rock.And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks,and for ever and ever. Why,look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef,in the harbor of Marseilles,that dug himself out that way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, guess.”
“I don’t know. A month and a half.”
“_Thirty-seven year_—and he come out in China._That’s_ the kind. I wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock. ”
“_Jim_ don’t know nobody in China.”
“What’s _that_ got to do with it?Neither did that other fellow.But you’re always a-wandering off on a side issue.Why can’t you stick to the main point?”
“All right—_I_ don’t care where he comes out,so he _comes_ out; and Jim don’t, either, I reckon.But there’s one thing,anyway—Jim’s too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won’t last.”
“Yes he will _last_, too.You don’t reckon it’s going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a _dirt_ foundation, do you?”
“How long will it take, Tom?”
“Well, we can’t resk being as long as we ought to,because it mayn’t take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He’ll hear Jim ain’t from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can’t resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can’t. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can _let on_, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there’s an alarm. Yes, I reckon that’ll be the best way.”
“Now, there’s _sense_ in that,” I says.“Letting on don’t cost nothing;letting on ain’t no trouble; and if it’s any object,I don’t mind letting on we was at it a hundred and fifty year.It wouldn’t strain me none, after I got my hand in.So I’ll mosey along now,and smouch a couple of case-knives.”
“Smouch three,” he says;“we want one to make a saw out of.”
“Tom, if it ain’t unregular and irreligious to sejest it,” I says, “there’s an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the weather-boarding behind the smoke-house.”
He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:
“It ain’t no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck.Run along and smouch the knives—three of them. ” So I done it.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said he was right behind Jim’s bed now, and we’d dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn’t nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there, because Jim’s counter-pin hung down most to the ground, and you’d have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn’t see we’d done anything hardly. At last I says:
“This ain’t no thirty-seven year job;this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer.”
He never said nothing. But he sighed,and pretty soon he stopped digging,and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. Then he says:
“It ain’t no use, Huck, it ain’t a-going to work.If we was prisoners it would,because then we’d have as many years as we wanted,and no hurry; and we wouldn’t get but a few minutes to dig,every day, while they was changing watches,and so our hands wouldn’t get blistered,and we could keep it up right along,year in and year out, and do it right,and the way it ought to be done.But _we_ can’t fool along; we got to rush;we ain’t got no time to spare.If we was to put in another night this way we’d have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well—couldn’t touch a case-knife with them sooner.”
“Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?”