akorn - Mighty Old Tales Retold

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 37 & 38

CHAPTER XXXVII & XXXVIII
The Last Shirt — Mooning Around — Sailing Orders — The Witch Pie
That was all fixed.  So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 35 & 36

CHAPTER XXXV & XXXVI
Escaping Properly — Dark Schemes — Discrimination in Stealing — A Deep Hole
It would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down into the woods; because Tom said we got to have SOME light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place.  We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds...

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 33 & 34

CHAPTER XXXIII & XXXIV
A Nigger Stealer — Southern Hospitality — A Pretty Long Blessing — Tar and Feathers
So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till he come along.  I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:
"I hain't ever done you no harm.  You know that.  So, then, what you want to come back and ha'nt ME for?"
I says:
"I hain't come back—I hain't been GONE.”

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 31 & 32

CHAPTER XXXI & XXXII
Ominous Plans — News from Jim — Old Recollections — A Sheep Story — Valuable Information
We dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river.  We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long ways from home.  We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards.  It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal.  So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again.

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 29 & 30

CHAPTER XXIX & XXX
Contested Relationship — The King Explains the Loss — A Question of Handwriting — Digging up the Corpse — Huck Escapes
They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling.  And, my souls, how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up.  But I didn't see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any.  I reckoned they'd turn pale.  But no, nary a pale did THEY turn.

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 27 & 28

CHAPTER XXVII & XXVIII
The Funeral — Satisfying Curiosity — Suspicious of Huck — Quick Sales and Small
I CREPT to their doors and listened; they was snoring.  So I tiptoed along, and got down stairs all right.  There warn't a sound anywheres.  I peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs.  The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there.

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 25 & 26

CHAPTER XXV & XXVI
Is It Them? — Singing the 'Doxologer' — Awful Square — Funeral Orgies — A Bad Investment
The news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come.  Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march.  The windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:
"Is it THEM?"
And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:
"You bet it is.”

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 23 & 24

CHAPTER XXIII & XXIV
Sold — Royal Comparisons — Jim Gets Home-sick
Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time.  When the place couldn't hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up...

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 21 & 22

CHAPTER XXI & XXII
Sword Exercise — Hamlet's Soliloquy — They Loafed Around Town — A Lazy Town — Old Boggs — Dead
It was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up.  The king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart.

Huckleberry Finn - Chapters 19 & 20

CHAPTER XIX & XX
Tying Up Day-times — An Astronomical Theory — Running a Temperance Revival — The Duke of Bridgewater — The Troubles of Royalty
Two or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely.  Here is the way we put in the time.  It was a monstrous big river down there—sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up—nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them.  Then we set out the lines.  Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come.  Not a sound anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep...