Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim (17 page)

Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. Then the baldhead says: “No! you can't mean it?"

"Yes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the titles and estates-the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal descendant of that infant-I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft!"

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to bow when we spoke to him, and say “Your Grace,” or “My Lord,” or “Your Lordship"-and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain “Bridgewater,” which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him, and says, “Will yo’ Grace have some o’ dis or some o’ dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him.

The duke says, “Yer a fine bagger, ain't ya? Smart like I never met before, an’ I have met me a whole pile o’ baggers. Traded a few in my days. Good money once upon a time. Soon they'll be a nickel for six, I reckon. But I see you still got some sense rattling about in yer big, dead head. You just might appreciate in value."

An’ Jim says, “Thanky, yo’ grace."

But the old man got pretty silent by and by-didn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in the afternoon, he says:

"Looky here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that."

"No?"

"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place."

"Alas!"

"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth.” And, by jings,
he
begins to cry.

"Hold! What do you mean?"

"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing.

"To the bitter death!” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, “That secret of your being: speak!"

"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!"

You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:

"You are what?"

"Yes, my friend, it is too true-your eyes is lookin’ at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette."

"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."

"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin’ rightful King of France."

Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorry-and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort
him
. But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by
his
father, and was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a good while, till by and by the king says:

"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft, Bilgewater, and so what's the use o’ your bein’ sour? It'll only make things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault you warn't born a king-so what's the use to worry? Make the best o’ things the way you find ‘em, says I-that's my motto. This ain't no bad thing that we've struck here-plenty grub and an easy life-come, give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends."

The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. They ‘uz always whispering too one another an’ makin’ suspicious eyes. An’ also-I warn't borned just yesterday.

So I took Jim to the edge and started a whisperin’ game of my own. I tells him the whole scene smells like pokey to me. I tells him:

"They ain't no royalty. They's fixin’ to fleece us somehow. Mebby knock us overboard an’ truck off with the raft."

"Why,” says Jim, “would a duke an’ dolphin need to fleece
us
?"

"'Cause they ain't no duke an’ dolphin, Jim. Lissen up to whut I'm tellin’ you-these is conference men.
Bad
men. They're fixin’ to swindle us good. I cain't devein the scheme, but sure as tootin’ they's cookin’ somethin’ evil. An’ we's just humiliatin’ ourselves every time we kneel down."

"Bad men, huh, Huck?"

"
Bad
men. Hyuh!"

And then I gave them swindlers a hard look out of the corner of my eyes, an’ I spit in the river so as to look stone. Din’ wanna give away the giveaway.

"Goodness sakes! Aside from bein’ a bagger he is also a negro, an’ why would a runaway bag-negro run
south
of all places?"

No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so I says:

"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he ‘lowed he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't nothing left but sixteen dollars and our bagger, Jim, who was a livin’ breathin’ negro until he catched the fissythis. That warn't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well, when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it. Pa's luck didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway bagger. We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us."

The duke says:

"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to. I'll think the thing over-I'll invent a plan that'll fix it. We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight-it mightn't be healthy."

Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was beginning to shiver-it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's, which was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed; but the king allowed he wouldn't. He says:

"I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace'll take the shuck bed yourself."

Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says:

"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit; ‘tis my fate. I am alone in the world-let me suffer; can bear it."

I was still dreamin’ up a scheme to rid ourselves of these jokers, but so-far I haidn't come up with nothin’ much. An’ Jim was keepin’ pretty mum.

The king comes over an’ says, “I knows yer a runnin’ zomby ‘cause I seen the sign at the print shop. Y'ain't foolin’ me, Jim. I knows precisely what's goin’ on here, an’ I also knows there be a reward fo’ yo’ capture, too. You jest keep thet in mind. You jest rememba’ it's not you two what calls the shots on dis river."

An’ I thought about lettin’ out a string o’ cuss-words, just then, but Jim pat me on th’ shoulder as to say to let it pass.

Them royals seemed to be holdin’ all the face cards.

We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and by-that was the town, you know-and slid by, about a half a mile out, all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a
h-whack
!-bum! bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum-and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit-and then
rip
comes another flash and another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them.

I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty good that way, Jim was. He come out an’ his lips looked to be dark and wet, but I couldn’ tell for sure in the night. So I crawled into the wigwam and beheld a right dreadful sight.

The king and the duke was deader ‘n hell.

The one fella's eyes was all bugged out an’ starin’ into eternity, and the other was a terr'ble bloody mess. Lookt to me like Jim'd strangled one fella with one hand and mebby gouged the’ other to death with a pick. There wasn't much about that one to identify him, ‘cept I could see the wide-eyed fella was the king so this one had to be the duke, by my deduction.

I come out an’ tells Jim to explain himself and tell about what happened. Jim says:

"They was
bad
men, Huck. You says so yo'self."

I says, “So you din’ hafta
kill
‘em for it."

"But I jes’ wanted to hab me a li'l taste. I don’ wan’ do wrong, Huck. I's lookin’ out fo’ you. An’ fo’ me. An’ I knowed those two was gonna mess it all up fo’ us. I jus’ had to take a li'l taste an’ satisfy my innerds."

"You had to go an’ eat that fella's face? You couldn't stop yourself?"

"Wall, I reckon I coulda, but I d'cided not to."

'Bout then the dark sky opened up an’ the rain come down. I laid down on the deck an’ just let it wash over me, an’ it was peaceful.

I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and the waves warn't running so high now. About two they come up again, though, and Jim was going to
roust
me; but he changed his mind, because he reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard. It most
re-
killed Jim a-laughing. He was the easiest bagger to laugh that ever was, anyway.

An’ when we got me back on the raft, Jim decides it's time to get rid of the royalty, and so we dumps the king and the duke over the side an’ waves goodbye to ‘em. I din’ feel too bad about it. I reckoned I shoulda felt worse, but I didn't. Mebby somethin’ was hard'ning inside me. Or soft'ning, too.

I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed I rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day. Me an’ Jim ate breakfast, an’ Jim looked mighty pleased of himself. I says:

"You sure did chew that fella good."

An’ Jim boasted, “I coulda et lots more, too, but I din’ wan’ seem a glutton. I jus’ wanted to fix the sitchyashun, is all. You did say they ‘uz
bad
men, an’ I knowed they was fixin’ to harm us."

"Yah, you did good."

"Thanky, Huck."

There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and we was out of coffee, so Jim said I better go along in the canoe and get some.

When I got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. I found a sick negro sunning himself in a back yard. He was all fancy an’ free an’ livin’ like a white man, ‘xcept he was dyin'; and he said everybody that warn't too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the woods. An’ that wasn't too many people either, on account o’ most folks were boilin’ up with pox, shut into their homes.

The negro said, “So many dyin', dey won't be no one left to bag
us
."

I had some smoke and then lit out for the camp-meeting.

I got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there, far more than the dyin’ negro figured, but also most of ‘em come from twenty mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.

The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on the sly. A few folks brought their baggers along, and these just stood out at the perimeter, stupidly, and stunk all th’ way to Heaven.

The first shed I came to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he lined out two more for them to sing-and so on. The people woke up more and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to groan, and some begun to shout, and even some of the baggers at the back began to sway, like they wasn't afraid of Hell no more. Then the preacher begun to preach, and begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory!-
a
-a-
men
!” And so he went on, and the people groaning and crying and saying amen:

"Oh, come to the mourners’ bench! come, black with sin! (
amen
!) come, sick and sore! (
amen
!) come, lame and halt and blind! (
amen
!) come, pore and needy, sunk in shame! (
a-a-men
!) come, all that's worn and soiled and suffering!-come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open-oh, enter in and be at rest!” (
a-a-
men!
glory, glory hallelujah
!)

And then he talked about the fissythis that was takin’ more folks ‘n ever before, an’ how ever'one had to pray harder to right the situation; an’ if you lost someone an’ they come back, you was s'posed to keep prayin’ for them so the devil would let go of their tortured souls.

Then came more singin'.

And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners’ bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.

Well, somethin’ got a-hold of me, and I raised my little voice up so you could hear me over everybody; and next I went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged me to speak to the people, and I done it.

I told them the same story I told the royals, but with a few alt'rations that I added as I went along, which is how most storytellin’ goes, anyway. I talked about livin’ in Pike County, an’ how ever'one died but me an’ pap an’ a brother named Ike. I talked about poorness and debt and pap's drinkin’ and gamblin'; an’ how I was orphaned and kidnapped; an’ how I excaped; and how me an my Uncle Ben was on a raft, headed for a new life in the South; an’ how a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft last night, and we both went overboard and dove under the wheel; and how I almost drowned comin’ ashore ‘cause I barely knowed how to swim.

And then I busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let
him
pass the hat around!” Then everybody said it, the preacher too.

So I went all through the crowd with my hat swabbing my eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor orphans of the world; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask me would I let them kiss me for to remember me by; and I always done it, even though it made me want to squirm outta my own skin-and I was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted me to live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but I said I was headin’ overland to try to make contact with an older sister that was my sole livin’ relative an’ I hadn't time to waste.