Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean the advenrures we had down the river the time we set the nigger fim free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn’t. It only just pisoned him for more. That was all the effects it had. You see, when we three come back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and everybody hurrah’d and shouted, and some got drunk, it made us heroes, and that was what...

Well Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had sore places in them somewheres and he had to shove them aside. So at last he was most about in despair. Then the St, Louis papers begun to talk a good deal about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn’t make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that maybe if he didn’t go he mightn’t ever have another chance to see...

We went to sleep about four o’clock and woke up about eight. The Professor was setting back there at his end looking glum. He pitched us some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass. That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp set, and you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.

There was one thing that kept bothering me,...

And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty and awful deep, and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the waves. All around us was a ring, a perfectly round ring, where the sky and the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring, it was, and we right in the dead centre of it. Plum in the centre. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn’t seem to git past that centre no way; I couldn’t see that we ever gained...

We tried to make some plans, but we couldn’t come to no agreement. Me and Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far towards England that we might as well go there and come back in a ship and have the glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, and then we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers and...

I was so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I made straight for my locker-bunk and stretched myself out there. But a body couldn’t git back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft. And mind you, it was a considerable strain on that balloon to lift the fleas, and reminded Tom of Mary had a little lamb its fleas was white as snow, but these wasn’t; these was the dark-complected kind, the kind that’s always hungry and ain’t particular,...

Noon!” says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the difference didn’t amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north of us or right south of us, one or t’other, and he reckoned by the weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the...

We had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the Desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn’t high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown, in the Desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting towards dawn you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.

We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and now and then gazing off across the Desert to see if anything was stirring, and then down at...

Still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand. Most of the Professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new way that somebody had just invented, the rest was fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in the coolish weather. Ours was all right till we stayed down so long amongst the dead people. That spoilt the water, and it ripened up the beefsteak to a degree that was just right for an Englishman, Tom said, but was most too...

Tom said it happened like this.

A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now, he run across a camel driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some ams. But the camel driver he asked to be excused. The dervish says—

“Don’t you own these camels?”

“Yes, they’re mine.”

“Are you in debt?”

“Who—me? No.”

“Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain’t in debt...

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...

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 north-east 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...

By and by we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the Pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of the Pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday school said, but he was gone, now, somebody had got him. But I didn’t take no interest in the place, because there could be ghosts there, of...

Well, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom’s uncle Silas’s farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumblctypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look...

We had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a sternwheeler from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse rivers away down Louisiana-way, and so we could go all the way down the Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis: not so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.

A pretty lonesome boat; there warn’t but few passengers, and all old folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was...

From that time out, we was with him most all the time, and one or t’other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his...

Well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up towards Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room up stairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the dark hall whilst we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a...

We didn’t get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we never stopped on our road but made a break for the sycamores as tight as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we could go to Brace’s and find out how things was, there. It was getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and panting with that long run, and sec the sycamores thirty yards ahead of us;...

We tramped along behind jim and Lern till we come to the back stile where old Jim’s cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn’t afeard, any more, and was going to climb over, but Tom says:

“Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!”

“What’s the rnattert?” says I.

“Matter enough!” he says. “Wasn’t you expecting we would be the first to tell the family who it is that’s been...

Benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt Polly, and then aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to see him so sad and...

It warn’t very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn’t seem to notice it was going on, which wasn’t her usual style; me and Tom had a plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn’t had much sleep, and whenever she’d lift her head a little and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they...

In the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity amongst them. They had him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn’t ever tired staring at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him he was so uncommon and romantic. His signs warn’t no good; people couldn’t understand them and he prob’ly couldn’t himself,...

Them awful words froze us solid. We couldn’t move hand or foot for as much as a half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and tried to comfort him, and poor old aunt Sally she done the same; but poor things they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their right minds that they didn’t hardly know what they was about. With Tom it was awful; it most petrified him to think maybe he had got...

Well, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was awful dreary, because the old man warn’t sleeping much, and was walking in his sleep considerable, and so he got to looking fagged and miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles...