Essential Novelists - Mark Twain. August Nemo

“chewed” but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought; matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an imposing adventure of it, saying, “Hist!” every now and then, and suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if “the foe” stirred, to “let him have it to the hilt,” because “dead men tell no tales.” They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.

      They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:

      “Luff, and bring her to the wind!”

      “Aye-aye, sir!”

      “Steady, steady-y-y-y!”

      “Steady it is, sir!”

      “Let her go off a point!”

      “Point it is, sir!”

      As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for “style,” and were not intended to mean anything in particular.

      “What sail’s she carrying?”

      “Courses, tops’ls, and flying-jib, sir.”

      “Send the r’yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye—foretopmaststuns’l! Lively, now!”

      “Aye-aye, sir!”

      “Shake out that maintogalans’l! Sheets and braces! now my hearties!”

      “Aye-aye, sir!”

      “Hellum-a-lee—hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port, port! Now, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!”

      “Steady it is, sir!”

      The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, “looking his last” upon the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing “she” could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson’s Island beyond eye-shot of the village, and so he “looked his last” with a broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last, too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two o’clock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight. Part of the little raft’s belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as became outlaws.

      They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn “pone” stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines.

      When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting campfire.

      “Ain’t it gay?” said Joe.

      “It’s nuts!” said Tom. “What would the boys say if they could see us?”

      “Say? Well, they’d just die to be here—hey, Hucky!”

      “I reckon so,” said Huckleberry; “anyways, I’m suited. I don’t want nothing better’n this. I don’t ever get enough to eat, gen’ally—and here they can’t come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so.”

      “It’s just the life for me,” said Tom. “You don’t have to get up, mornings, and you don’t have to go to school, and wash, and all that blame foolishness. You see a pirate don’t have to do anything, Joe, when he’s ashore, but a hermit he has to be praying considerable, and then he don’t have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way.”

      “Oh yes, that’s so,” said Joe, “but I hadn’t thought much about it, you know. I’d a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I’ve tried it.”

      “You see,” said Tom, “people don’t go much on hermits, nowadays, like they used to in old times, but a pirate’s always respected. And a hermit’s got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and—”

      “What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?” inquired Huck.

      “I dono. But they’ve got to do it. Hermits always do. You’d have to do that if you was a hermit.”

      “Dern’d if I would,” said Huck.

      “Well, what would you do?”

      “I dono. But I wouldn’t do that.”

      “Why, Huck, you’d have to. How’d you get around it?”

      “Why, I just wouldn’t stand it. I’d run away.”

      “Run away! Well, you would be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You’d be a disgrace.”

      The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a cloud of fragrant smoke—he was in the full bloom of luxurious contentment. The other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:

      “What does pirates have to do?”

      Tom said:

      “Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there’s ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make ’em walk a plank.”

      “And they carry the women to the island,” said Joe; “they don’t kill the women.”

      “No,” assented Tom, “they don’t kill the women—they’re too noble. And the women’s always beautiful, too.

      “And don’t they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver and di’monds,” said Joe, with enthusiasm.

      “Who?” said Huck.

      “Why, the pirates.”

      Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.

      “I reckon I ain’t dressed fitten for a pirate,” said he, with a regretful pathos in his voice; “but I ain’t got none but these.”

      But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand that his poor rags would do to begin with,