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- 3914
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- 2026-01-28T02:26:40.355Z
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- 3840
- text
- “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.”
- title
- Chunk 3