- end_line
- 8241
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-28T17:35:24.553Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8180
- text
- Within a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal’s cave, and the ferryboat, well filled
with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore
Judge Thatcher.
When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in
the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground,
dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing
eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer
of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own
experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but
nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now,
which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated
before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day
he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.
Injun Joe’s bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great
foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with
tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock formed a
sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had wrought
no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if there
had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless
still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could not have
squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had only hacked
that place in order to be doing something—in order to pass the weary
time—in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily one could
find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this
vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The prisoner
had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to catch a
few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their claws. The
poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at hand, a
stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded
by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off
the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had
scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once
in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick—a
dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling
when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome
were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the
British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was
“news.”
It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall
have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition,
and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a
purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand
years to be ready for this flitting human insect’s need? and has it
another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No
matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped
out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist
stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when
he comes to see the wonders of McDougal’s cave. Injun Joe’s cup stands
first in the list of the cavern’s marvels; even “Aladdin’s Palace”
cannot rival it.
Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and
all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.
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- Chunk 1