grow dim or
doubtful.  But  I  can  tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was down on them people
that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of everything that happens,
no matter whether-"
   But  Jim  was  asleep.  Tom  looked kind of ashamed, because you know a
person  always  feels  bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the
other person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of
course  he  oughtn't  to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a
person  talks  the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come
to  look  at  it  it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to
blame.
   Jim begun to snore-soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a
stronger  one,  then  a  half  a  dozen  horrible ones like the last water
sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power to
it,  and  some  big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that is
choking  to  death; and when the person has got to that point he is at his
level  best,  and  can  wake  up  a  man  that is in the next block with a
dipperful  of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that
awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that is
the  curiosest  thing  in  the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to
light  the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I
knowed  what  was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to
find  out.  Now  there  was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the
animals  out,  for  miles  and miles around, to see what in the nation was
going  on  up  there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to
the  noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed
by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but the
first  time  there  come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind it
woke  him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and there
ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
   Jim  said  he  hadn't  been  asleep;  he just shut his eyes so he could
listen better.
   Tom said nobody warn't accusing him.
   That  made  him  look  like  he  wished he hadn't said anything. And he
wanted  to  git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse
the  cameldriver,  just  the  way a person does when he has got catched in
something  and  wants  to  take  it  out of somebody else. He let into the
camel-driver  the  hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and
he  praised  up  the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with
him there, too. But Tom says:
   "I  ain't  so  sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good
and  unselfish,  but  I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor
dervish,  did  he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go
in  there  himself  and  take  a  pocketful  of jewels and go along and be
satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a hundred
camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could."
   "Why,  Mars  Tom,  he  was  willin' to divide, fair and square; he only
struck for fifty camels."
   "Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."
   "Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline."
   "Yes,  because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a
man  he  was  hunting  for-a  man that never believes in anybody's word or
anybody's  honorableness,  because  he ain't got none of his own. I reckon
there's  lots  of  people like that dervish. They swindle, right and left,
but  they  always make the other person SEEM to swindle himself. They keep
inside  of  the  letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to
git  hold  of them. THEY don't put the salve on-oh, no, that would be sin;
but  they  know  how  to  fool  YOU into putting it on, then it's you that
blinds  yourself.  I  reckon  the  dervish and the camel-driver was just a
pair-a  fine,  smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but
both of them rascals, just the same."
   "Mars  Tom,  does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl'
now?"
   "Yes,  Uncle  Abner  says there is. He says they've got it in New York,
and  they  put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads
in  the  world,  and  they  go in and git them, and then when they rub the
salve  on  the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with
their railroads. Here's the treasure-hill now. Lower away!"
   We  landed,  but  it warn't as interesting as I thought it was going to
be,  because  we  couldn't  find  the  place where they went in to git the
treasure.  Still,  it  was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere
hill  itself  where  such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou'dn't
'a' missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way.
   And  to  me  and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could
come  into  a  strange  big  country  like this and go straight and find a
little  hump  like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps
that  was  almost  just  like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning  and  his  own  natural  smartness.  We talked and talked it over
together,  but  couldn't  make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him  I  ever  see;  and  all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a' crowded
either  of  THEM  to  find  that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn't
nothing  to  Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on it as
easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.
   We  found  a  pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as they
would keep till Jim could tan them.


        Chapter XI. THE SAND-STORM

   WE  went  a-fooling  along  for a day or two, and then just as the full
moon  was  touching  the  ground on the other side of the desert, we see a
string  of  little  black  figgers  moving across its big silver face. You
could  see  them  as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It
was  another  caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it,
just  to  have  company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler,
that  caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun
come  a-streaming  across  the  desert  and flung the long shadders of the
camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-longlegses marching in
procession.  We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans. It
was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style. Some
of  the  chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall,
and  they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man
that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, I bet
you,  but  they make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with them
for speed.
   The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look
very  curious.  First  it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper, and
after  that it begun to look like a bloodred ball, and the air got hot and
close,  and  pretty  soon  all  the sky in the west darkened up and looked
thick  and  foggy, but fiery and dreadful-like it looks through a piece of
red  glass,  you  know. We looked down and see a big confusion going on in
the  caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was scared; and then
they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there perfectly still.
   Pretty  soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall,  and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it
was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and
then  it  come  harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces
and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:
   "It's a sand-storm-turn your backs to it!"
   We  done  it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat  against  us  by  the  shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't  see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting  on  the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.
   Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across  the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and
looked  down,  and  where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but
just  the  sand  ocean  now,  and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried-buried under ten foot of sand, we
reckoned,  and  Tom  allowed  it  might be years before the wind uncovered
them,  and  all  that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:
   "NOW  we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."
   Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in  a  sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never  uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to  eat.  It  seemed  to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person  could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see, the
others  was  total  strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with
them  at  all,  except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the
girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering around
them  a  whole  night  and  'most a whole day, and had got to feeling real
friendly  with  them, and acquainted. I have found out that there ain't no
surer  way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel
with  them.  Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the start, and
traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we traveled with them,
and  the  more  we  got used to their ways, the better and better we liked
them,  and  the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had
come  to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was
talking  about  them,  and  soon got so familiar and sociable that we even
dropped  the  Miss  and Mister and just used their plain names without any
handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course,
it wasn't their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander
Robinson  and  Miss  Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet  McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and
these  was  big  chiefs  mostly  that  wore  splendid  great  turbans  and
simmeters,  and  dressed  like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as
soon  as  we  come  to  know them good, and like them very much, it warn't
Mister,  nor  Judge, nor nothing, any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and
Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.
   And  you  know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows,  the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn't
cold  and  indifferent,  the  way  most  travelers  is,  we was right down
friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and
the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no
difference what it was.
   When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up  in  the  air.  When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much  homeliker to have their company. When they had a wedding that night,
and  Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest
of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in
and shook a foot up there.
   But  it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still dawn.
We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that never made
no  difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there
warn't  no  more  sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on
him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
   Yes,  parting  with  this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to
part  with  them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so
long,  anyway.  We  had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them,
too,  and  now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while
we  was  looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of
that  big  desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any
more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that.
   We  couldn't  keep  from  talking about them, and they was all the time
coming  up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was
all  alive  and  happy  together.  We could see the line marching, and the
shiny  spearheads  a-winking  in  the  sun;  we  could see the dromedaries
lumbering  along;  we  could  see  the  wedding  and the funeral; and more
oftener  than  anything else we could see them praying, because they don't
allow  nothing  to  prevent  that; whenever the call come, several times a
day,  they  would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and
lift  back  their  heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or
five  times  they  would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and
touch their forehead to the ground.
   Well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn't
do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going to live
as  good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world;
and  Tom  kept  still  and  didn't  tell him they was only Mohammedans; it
warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as it was.
   When  we  woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and
had  had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed
there  is,  and  I  don't  see why people that can afford it don't have it
more.  And  it's  terrible  good  ballast, too; I never see the balloon so
steady before.
   Tom  allowed  we  had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do
with it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away.
Jim says:
   "Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?"
   "Depends on the way we go."
   "Well,  sah,  she's  wuth  a  quarter  of a dollar a load at home, en I
reckon  we's  got  as  much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat
be?"
   "Five dollars."
   "By jings, Mars Tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! Hit's more'n
a dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?"
   "Yes."
   "Well,  ef  dat  ain't  makin' money de easiest ever I struck! She jes'
rained in-never cos' us a lick o' work. Le's mosey right along, Mars Tom."
   But  Tom  was  thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never
heard him. Pretty soon he says:
   "Five  dollars-sho!  Look here, this sand's worth-worth-why, it's worth
no end of money."
   "How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"
   "Well,  the  minute  people  knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne
Desert  of  Sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold
of  some  of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a
curiosity.  All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all
over  the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We've got
all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat."
   Me   and  Jim  went  all  to  pieces  with  joy,  and  begun  to  shout
whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:
   "And  we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and
fetching  more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole
Desert  over  there  and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any
opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent."
   "My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?"
   "Yes-Creesus,  you  mean.  Why, that dervish was hunting in that little
hill  for  the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over
the  real  ones  for  a  thousand  miles.  He was blinder than he made the
driver."
   "Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"
   "Well,  I  don't  know  yet.  It's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the
easiest  job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of
sand at ten cents a vial."
   Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook
his head and says:
   "Mars  Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials-a king couldn't. We better not
try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'."
   Tom's  excitement  died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account
of  the  vials,  but  it  wasn't. He set there thinking, and got bluer and
bluer, and at last he says:
   "Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up."
   "Why, Tom?"
   "On account of the duties."
   I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:
   "What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git around it, why can't we
just DO it? People often has to."
   But he says:
   "Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you
strike  a  frontier-that's  the  border  of a country, you know-you find a
customhouse there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among your
things  and  charges  a big tax, which they call a duty because it's their
duty  to  bust  you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll hog
your  sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody, it's
just  hogging, and that's all it is. Now if we try to carry this sand home
the  way  we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git tired-just
frontier  after  frontier-Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so on, and they'll
all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we CAN'T go THAT road."
   "Why,  Tom,"  I  says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how
are THEY going to stop us?"
   He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:
   "Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?"
   I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:
   "Well,  we're  shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we've
come,  there's  the  New  York custom-house, and that is worse than all of
them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got."
   "Why?"
   "Well,  they  can't  raise  Sahara sand in America, of course, and when
they  can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per
cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it."
   "There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."
   "Who  said  there WAS? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn?
You wait till I say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me
of saying it."
   "All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on."
   Jim says:
   "Mars  Tom,  do  dey  jam  dat  duty  onto everything we can't raise in
America, en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?"
   "Yes, that's what they do."
   "Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?"
   "Yes, it is."
   "Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?"
   "Yes."
   "Whah do it come from?"
   "From heaven."
   "Yassir!  you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey-it come from heaven, en
dat's a foreign country. NOW, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?"
   "No, they don't."
   "Course  dey  don't;  en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, Mars
Tom.  Dey  wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't
'bleeged  to  have,  en  leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody
can't git along widout."
   Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn't budge.
He  tried  to wiggle out by saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but
they'd  be  sure  to remember about it, next session of Congress, and then
they'd  put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. He
said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one, and
so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be consistent was
the  first  law  of  politics.  So  he stuck to it that they'd left it out
unintentional  and would be certain to do their best to fix it before they
got caught and laughed at.
   But  I  didn't  feel  no  more  interest  in such things, as long as we
couldn't  git  our  sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the
same.  Tom  he  tried  to  cheer us up by saying he would think up another
speculation  for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but
it  didn't  do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. It
was  mighty  hard;  such  a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a'
bought  a country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and
now  we  was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands.
The  sand  was  looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and
the  feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear
the  sight  of  it, it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't
ever  feel  comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I didn't have it
there  no  more  to  remind  us  of  what  we had been and what we had got
degraded down to. The others was feeling the same way about it that I was.
I knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le's throw this
truck overboard.
   Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so
Tom  he  divided  it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and
him  would  clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim threefifths. Jim
he didn't quite like that arrangement. He says:
   "Course  I's  de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share accordin', but
by jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?"
   "Well,  I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and
let's see."
   So  Jim  reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and Tom done a
TENTH  apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then
he  smole  a  smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to the
westward,  back  to  the  Atlantic  edge of it where we come from. Then he
turned  around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was
satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.
   So  then  Tom  measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest
for Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there
was  and  what  a  raging  lot  of sand his share come to, and said he was
powerful  glad  now  that  he  had  spoke  up  in  time  and got the first
arrangement  altered,  for he said that even the way it was now, there was
more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.
   Then  we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had
to  move  up  into  cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom
took  turn  about,  and  one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't
nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp, he
sweated  so.  We  couldn't  work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he
kept  fretting  and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep
making  up  things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions,
but  they  done  well enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when we
got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and by
Jim  was  'most  dead,  too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and
spelled  him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the
gunnel  and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to
a  poor  old  nigger,  and  he  wouldn't ever forgit us. He was always the
gratefulest  nigger  I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He
was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.


        Chapter XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE

   THE  next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference
when  you  are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat,
anyway,  and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as
far as I can see.
   Then  we  struck  the  east  end  of  the  Desert at last, sailing on a
northeast course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light,
we see three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:
   "It's the pyramids of Egypt."
   It  made  my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a
picture  of  them,  and  heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to
come  on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of
imaginations,  'most  knocked  the  breath out of me with surprise. It's a
curious  thing,  that  the  more  you hear about a grand and big and bully
thing  or  person,  the  more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and
gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing solid
to  it.  It's  just  so  with  George  Washington,  and the same with them
pyramids.
   And  moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to
me  to  be  stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once,
and had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid
covered  thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep
mountain,  all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up
in  perfectly  regular  layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see,
for  just one building; it's a farm. If it hadn't been in Sunday-school, I
would  'a'  judged  it  was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he
said  there  was  a  hole  in  the pyramid, and you could go in there with
candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a large
room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would find a big
stone  chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. I said to myself,
then, if that ain't a lie I will eat that king if they will fetch him, for
even Methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it.
   As  we  come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a
long  straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge,
a  wide  country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it,
and  Tom  said  it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile
was  another  thing  that  wasn't real to me. Now I can tell you one thing
which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles of
yaller  sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water to
look  at  it,  and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it, the
green  country  will look so like home and heaven to you that it will make
your eyes water AGAIN.
   It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.
   And  when  Jim  got so he could believe it WAS the land of Egypt he was
looking  at,  he  wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees
and  took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor
nigger  to  come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph
and  Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a most
deep  respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was all
stirred up, and says:
   "Hit's  de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, en I's 'lowed to look at it
wid  my own eyes! En dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en I's looking
at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en de
locus',  en  de  hail,  en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de
Lord  come  by  in  de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de
lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day!"
   And  then  he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between
him  and Tom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was
so full of history-Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob
coming  down  into  Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all
them interesting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land was
so  full  of history that was in HIS line, about Noureddin, and Bedreddin,
and  such  like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and a raft of
other  Arabian  Nights folks, which the half of them never done the things
they let on they done, I don't believe.
   Then  we  struck  a  disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs
started  up,  and  it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we
would  go  by  Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass
straight  for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted
out,  and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep
a sharp lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor, and
Jim  he  straddled  the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and watch
out  for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very fast, and
the  fog  got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim and ragged
and  smoky  through  it.  It  was  awful  still, and we talked low and was
anxious. Now and then Jim would say:
   "Highst  her  a  p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a
foot  or  two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with
people  that  had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and
stretch;  and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could
gap  and  stretch  better,  we took him a blip in the back and knocked him
off.  By  and  by,  after  about an hour, and everything dead still and we
a-straining  our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a
little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:
   "Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant
outen de 'Rabian Nights acomin' for us!" and he went over backwards in the
boat.
   Tom  slammed  on  the  back-action,  and as we slowed to a standstill a
man's  face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as
a  house  looks  out  of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a'
been  clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to,
and  Tom  had  hitched a boathook on to the lower lip of the giant and was
holding  the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got
a good long look up at that awful face.
   Jim  was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in
a  begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took
only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:
   "He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"
   I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the
giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful
any  more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of sad, and
not  thinking  about you, but about other things and larger. It was stone,
reddish  stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an abused
look, and you felt sorrier for it for that.
   We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just
grand.  It  was  a  man's  head,  or  maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a
hundred  and  twenty-five  foot  long,  and there was a dear little temple
between  its  front  paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for
hundreds  of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand
away  and  found  that little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that
cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon.
   We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him,
it  being  a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other
distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and proportions,
and  Jim  he  done  the best he could, striking all the different kinds of
attitudes  and  positions  he could study up, but standing on his head and
working  his  legs  the  way  a frog does was the best. The further we got
away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the Sphinx got, till at last it
was  only  a  clothespin  on  a  dome,  as  you  might say. That's the way
perspective  brings  out  the correct proportions, Tom said; he said Julus
Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was too close to him.
   Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all
any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out over
the  Nile  Valley  so  still  and  solemn and lonesome, and all the little
shabby  huts  and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and
gone,  and  nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet,
which was the sand.
   That  was  the  right  place  to  stop,  and  we  done it. We set there
a-looking and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for
it  made  us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking
over  that  valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all
to  itself for thousands of years. and nobody can't find out what they are
to this day.
   At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering
around  on  that  velvet  carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's
back,  and  then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom
to look. He done it, and says:
   "They're  bugs.  No-hold on; they-why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's
men-men  and  horses  both.  They're  hauling  a  long  ladder up onto the
Sphinx's  back-now  ain't  that  odd? And now they're trying to lean it up
a-there's some more puffs of smoke-it's guns! Huck, they're after Jim."
   We  clapped on the power, and went for them abiling. We was there in no
time,  and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered
every  which  way,  and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go
all  holts  and fell. We soared up and found him laying on top of the head
panting  and  most  tuckered  out, partly from howling for help and partly
from  scare. He had been standing a siege a long time-a week, HE said, but
it  warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding him
so.  They  had  shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but he
warn't  hit,  and  when  they  found  he wouldn't stand up and the bullets
couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder, and
then  he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick. Tom
was  very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and command
them  to  GIT,  in the name of the United States. Jim said he done it, but
they  never  paid  no  attention. Tom said he would have this thing looked
into at Washington, and says:
   "You'll  see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and
pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off THAT easy."
   Jim says:
   "What's an indemnity, Mars Tom?"
   "It's cash, that's what it is."
   "Who gits it, Mars Tom?"
   "Why, WE do."
   "En who gits de apology?"
   "The  United  States.  Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take
the apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money."
   "How much money will it be, Mars Tom?"
   "Well,  in  an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three
dollars apiece, and I don't know but more."
   "Well, den, we'll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de 'pology. Hain't dat
yo' notion, too? En hain't it yourn, Huck?"
   We  talked  it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as
any,  so  we  agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I
asked  Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he
says:
   "Yes; the little ones does."
   We  was  sailing  around  examining  the pyramids, you know, and now we
soared up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was
just  like  what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs
of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together
in  a  point  at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way
you  climb  other  stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and
you  have  to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn't far
away,  and  the  people  moving about on the sand between looked like bugs
crawling, we was so high above them.
   Tom  he  couldn't  hold  himself  he was so worked up with gladness and
astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped history
from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn't scarcely believe he was
standing  on  the  very  identical spot the prince flew from on the Bronze
Horse.  It  was  in  the  Arabian  Night times, he said. Somebody give the
prince  a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him
and  fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer
it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to.
   When  he  got  done  telling  it  there  was  one of them uncomfortable
silences  that  comes,  you know, when a person has been telling a whopper
and  you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change
the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and
before  you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has
got  in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he
was  embarrassed,  and  neither  of  us  couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he
glowered at me a minute, and says:
   "Come, out with it. What do you think?"
   I says:
   "Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself."
   "What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?"
   "There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all."
   "What's the reason it couldn't happen?"
   "You tell me the reason it COULD happen."
   "This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon."
   "WHY is it?"
   "WHY  is  it?  I  never  saw  such an idiot. Ain't this balloon and the
bronze horse the same thing under different names?"
   "No,  they're  not. One is a balloon and the other's a horse. It's very
different. Next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing."
   "By Jackson, Huck's got him ag'in! Dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!"
   "Shut  your  head,  Jim;  you don't know what you're talking about. And
Huck  don't.  Look  here,  Huck,  I'll  make  it  plain to you, so you can
understand. You see, it ain't the mere FORM that's got anything to do with
their  being  similar  or  unsimilar, it's the PRINCIPLE involved; and the
principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now?"
   I turned it over in my mind, and says:
   "Tom,  it ain't no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git
around  that  one  big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no
sort of proof of what a horse can do."
   "Shucks,  Huck,  you  don't  get  the  idea  at  all.  Now  look here a
minute-it's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air?"
   "Yes."
   "Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?"
   "Yes."
   "Don't we steer whichever way we want to?"
   "Yes."
   "And don't we land when and where we please?"
   "Yes."
   "How do we move the balloon and steer it?"
   "By touching the buttons."
   "NOW  I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the
moving  and  steering  was  done  by turning a peg. We touch a button, the
prince  turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, you see. I knowed
I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough."
   He  felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he
broke off surprised, and says:
   "Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it YET?"
   I says:
   "Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions."
   "Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.
   "As  I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg-the
rest  ain't  of  no  consequence.  A button is one shape, a peg is another
shape, but that ain't any matter?"
   "No, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power."
   "All right, then. What is the power that's in a candle and in a match?"
   "It's the fire."
   "It's the same in both, then?"
   "Yes, just the same in both."
   "All  right.  Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what
will happen to that carpenter shop?"
   "She'll burn up."
   "And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle-will she burn up?"
   "Of course s