Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the fifteenth chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter 15 we judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after.

We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states and.

Then be out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun.

To come on and we made for a tow head to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog, but when I paddled ahead in the canoe with the line to make fast, there weren't anything but little saplings to tie to.

I passed the line around one of them, right on the edge of the cutbank, but there was a stiff current and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went.

I see the fog closing down and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute, it seemed to me.

And then there weren't no raft in sight.

You couldn't see 20 yards.

I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern and grabbed the paddle and set her back a stroke, but she didn't come.

I was in such a hurry, I hadn't untied her.

I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my hands shook, so I couldn't hardly do anything with them.

As soon as I got started, I.

Took out after the raft, hot and.

Heavy, right down the Toehead.

That was all right as far as it went, but the tow head weren't 60 yards long, and the minute I.

Flew by the foot of it I.

Shot out into the solid white fog and had no more idea which way I was going than a dead man think sigh.

It won't do to paddle first, I.

Know I'll run into the bank or.

A Toehead or something.

I got to set still and float.

And yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hand still at such a time.

I whooped and listened away.

Down there somewhere.

I hears a small whoop and up comes my spirits.

I went tearing after it, listening sharp to hear it again.

The next time it come, I see I weren't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it.

And the next time I was heading.

Away to the left of it and.

Not gaining on it much either, for I was flying around this way and that and the other, but it was going straight ahead all the time.

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the Whoops that was making the trouble for me.

Well, I fought along, and directly I hears the whoop behind me.

I was tangled good.

Now that was somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.

I throwed the paddle down.

I heard the whoop again.

It was behind me yet, but in a different place.

It kept coming and kept changing its place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head downstream, and I was all right.

If that was Jim and not some other raftsmen hollering.

I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog for nothing.

Don't look natural, nor sound natural in a fog.

The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared.

The current was tearing by them so swift in another second or two it was solid white and still again.

I sat perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

I just give up, then I knowed what the matter was.

That cut bank was an island, and Jim had gone down the other side of it.

It weren't no tow head that you could float by in ten minutes.

It had the big timber of a regular island.

It might be five or 6 miles long and more than a half mile wide.

I kept quiet with my ears cocked, about 15 minutes, I reckon.

I was floating along, of course, for 5 miles an hour.

But you don't ever think of that.

No, you feel like you're laying dead still on the water.

And if a little glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my, how that snag's tearing along.

If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once.

You'll see next.

For about a half hour, I whoops now and then at last I hears the answer a long ways off and tries to follow it.

But I couldn't do it.

And directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of me, sometimes just a narrow channel between and some that I couldn't see, I knowed was there because I hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks.

Well, I weren't long losing the Whoops down amongst the towheads and I only.

Tried to chase them a little while.

Anyway because it was worse than chasing a jacko lantern.

You never know to sound dodge around.

So and swap places so quick and so much.

I had to claw away from the.

Bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river.

And so I judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearing.

It was floating a little faster than what I was.

Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't hear.

No sign of a Whoop nowheres.

I reckon Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him.

I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more.

I didn't want to go to sleep, of course, but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it.

So I thought I would take just.

One little cat nap.

But I reckon it was more than.

A cat nap from when I waked up.

The stars was shining bright.

The fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern.

First I didn't know where I was.

I thought I was dreaming.

And when things began to come back to me, they seemed to come up dim out of last week.

It was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks.

Just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars.

I looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water.

I took after it, but when I got to it, it weren't nothing but.

A couple of saw logs made fast together.

Then I see another speck and chase that.

Then another.

And this time I was right.

It was the raft.

When I got to it, Jim was sitting there with his head down between.

His knees, asleep with his right arm.

Hanging over the steering ore.

The other ore was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt.

So she'd had a rough time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft and began.

To gap and stretch my fists out.

Against Jim and says, hello, Jim.

Have I been asleep?

Why didn't you stir me up?

Goodness gracious.

Is that you, hook?

And you ain't dead.

You ain't drowned.

Use back again.

It's too good for true, honey.

It's too good for true.

Let me look at you, child.

Let me feel you.

No, you ain't dead.

Use back again.

Living the sound.

Just the same old huck.

The same old huck.

Thanks to goodness.

What's the matter with you, Jim?

You been a drinking.

Drinking?

Has I been a drinking?

Has I a chance to be a drinking?

Well, then what's made you talk so wild?

How does I talk wild?

How?

Why, ain't you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if I'd been gone away.

C*** finn.

You look me into I?

Look me into I Ain't you been gone away.

Gone away?

Why, what in the nation do you mean?

I ain't been gone anywhere.

Where would I go to?

Well, looky here, Boss day.

Something wrong?

They is.

Is I me or who?

Is I?

Is I here?

Or where is I?

Now, that's what I wants to know.

Well, I think you're here plain enough, but I think you're a tangle headed old fool.

Jim I is is i.

Will you answer me this?

Didn't you towed out the line into canoe for to make fast to the Toehead?

No, I didn't.

What toe head?

I ain't seen no toe head.

You ain't seen no toe head?

Looky here.

Didn't the line pull loose and Duraf go a humming down the river and leave you into canoe behind into fog?

What fog?

Why, the fog.

The fog that's been around all night.

And didn't you whoop and didn't I whoop till we got mixed up into islands and one of us got lost.

And the other one was just as.

Good as lost because he didn't know where he was.

And didn't I bust up again a lot islands and have a terrible time and moss get drowned.

Now.

Ain't dad so boss?

Ain't it so?

You answer me, dad.

Well, this is too many for me, Jim.

I ain't seen no fog nor nor islands nor no troubles nor nothing.

I've been sitting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I'd done the same.

You couldn't have got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming.

Dad, fetch it.

How is I going to dream all.

That in ten minutes?

Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen.

But Huck, it's all just as plain.

To me as I don't make no.

Difference how plain it is.

There ain't nothing in it.

I know because I've been here all the time.

Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but sat there studying over it.

Then he says, well, then I reckon I did dream it, Huck.

But dog my cats, if it ain't the powerfulest dream I ever see.

And I ain't ever had no dream before that's tired me like this one.

Well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes.

But this one was a staving dream.

Tell me all about it, Jim.

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable.

Then he said he must start in interpret it because it was sent for a warning.

He said the first toe head stood for a man that would try to do us some good.

But the current was another man that would get us away from him.

The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then.

And if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them, they'd just take us into bad luck instead of keeping us out of it.

The lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks.

But if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river which was the Free States and wouldn't have no more trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got onto the raft, but it was clearing up again now.

Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim, I says, but what does these things stand for?

It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed ore.

You could see them first right now.

Jim looked at the trash and then looked at me and back at the trash again.

He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away.

But when he did get the thing straightened around, he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says, what do they stand for?

As I'm going to tell you, when I got all wore out mid work and would call in for you and went to sleep, my heart was most broke because you was lost and I didn't care no more what become of me and the raft.

And when I wake up and find you back again all safe and sound, the tears come and I could have got down on my knees and kiss your foot.

I'm so thankful.

And all you was thinking about was how you could make a fool of old Jim with a lie.

That truck dad's trash and trash is what people is that puts dirt onto head and they friends and make them ashamed.

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that.

But that was enough.

It made me feel so mean, I could have almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.

It was 15 minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a servant.

But I'd done it.

And I weren't ever sorry for it afterwards neither.

I didn't do him no more mean tricks and I wouldn't have done that if I'd have known it would make him feel that way.

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

Time books today while we read a.

Bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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