Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-fifth chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry.

Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter 35 it would be most an hour yet till breakfast.

So we left and struck down into the woods because Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by and a lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble.

What we must have is a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox fire and just makes a soft kind of glow when you lay them in a dark place.

We fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds and set down to rest and Tom says kind of dissatisfied, blame it.

This whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be and so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan.

There ain't no watchman to be drugged.

Now there ought to be a watchman.

There ain't even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to.

And there's Jim, chained by one leg with a ten foot chain to the leg of his bed.

Why, all you got to do is lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain.

An Uncle Silas.

He trusts everybody.

Sends a key to the punk and head servant and don't send nobody to watch the servant.

Jim could have got out of that window hole before this.

Only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten foot chain on his leg.

My Dratted.

Huck, it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see.

You got to invent all the difficulties.

Well, we can't help it.

We got to do the best we can with the materials we've got anyhow.

There's one thing there's more honor in getting them out through a lot of difficulties and dangers where there weren't one of them furnished to you by the people who was.

It their duty to furnish them and you had to contrive them all out of your own head.

Now look at just that one thing of the lantern.

When you come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a lantern's rescue.

Why, we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe.

Now whilst I think of it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get.

What do we want of a saw?

What do we want of it?

Ain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's Bed off so as to get the chain loose?

Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off.

Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn.

You can get up the infant's schooliest ways of going at a thing.

Why, ain't you ever read any books at all, Baron Trank?

Nor Casanova, nor Bentonuva Chalini, nor Henry IV, nor none of them heroes?

Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old meaty way as that.

No, the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed leg in two and leave it just so and swallow the sawdust so it can't be found.

And put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so the very keenest sense goal can't see no sign of it being soed and thinks the bed leg is perfectly sound.

Then the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes, slip off your chain, and there you are.

Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to the battlements shin down.

It break your leg in the moat because a rope ladder is 19 foot too short, you know.

And there's your horses and your trusty vassals, and they scoop you up and fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native languidoc or navera or whatever it is it's gaudy.

Huck, I wish there was a moat to this cabin.

If we get time, the night of the escape will dig one.

I says, what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin?

But he never heard me.

He had forgot me and everything else.

He had its chin in his hand, thinking.

Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head, then size again and says, no, it wouldn't do.

There ain't necessity enough for it.

For what?

I says.

Why, to saw Jim's leg off, he says, good land, I says, why, there ain't no necessity for it.

And what would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?

Well, some of the best authorities has done it.

They couldn't get the chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved, and a leg would be better still.

But we got to let that go.

There ain't necessity enough in this case.

And besides, Jim's a servant and wouldn't understand the reasons for it and how it's the custom in Europe.

So we'll let it go.

But there's one thing.

He can have a rope ladder.

We can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough.

And we can send it to him in a pie.

It's mostly done that way, and I've ate worse pies.

Why, Tom Sawyer.

How you talk?

I says, Jim ain't got no use for a rope ladder.

He has got use for it.

How you talk.

You better say you don't know nothing about it.

He's got to have a rope ladder.

They all do.

What in the nation can he do with it?

Do with it?

He can hide it in his bed, can't he?

That's what they all do, and he's got to, too.

Hawk, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular.

You want to be starting something fresh all the time.

Suppose you don't do nothing with it.

Ain't it there in his bed for a clue after he's gone?

And don't you reckon they'll want clues?

Of course they will.

And you wouldn't leave them any.

That would be a pretty howdy do, wouldn't it?

I never heard of such a thing.

Well, I says, if it's in the regulations and he's got to have it.

All right, let him have it, because I don't wish to go back.

No regulations.

But there's one thing, Tom Sawyer.

If we go to tearing up our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble with Aunt Sally just as sure as you're born.

Now, the way I look at it, a hickory bark ladder don't cost nothing and don't waste nothing and is just as good to load up a pie with and hide in a straw tick as any rag ladder you can start.

And as for Jim, he ain't had no experience, and so he don't care what kind of oh, shucks hawks in.

If I was as ignorant as you, I'd keep still.

That's what I'd do.

Whoever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickory bark ladder?

Why, it's perfectly ridiculous.

All right, Tom, fix it your own way.

But if you'll take my advice, you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline.

He said that would do, and that gave him another idea.

And he says, borrow a shirt, too.

What do we want of a shirt?

Tom wanted for Jim to keep a journal on.

Journal?

Your granny jim can't write.

Suppose he can't write.

He can make marks on the shirt, can't he?

If we can make him a pin out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel hoop my Tom.

We can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one and a quicker one too.

Prisoners don't have geese running around the dungeon keep to pull pins out of you muggins.

They always make their pins out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on.

And it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out too because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall.

They wouldn't use a goose quill if they had it.

It ain't regular.

Well, then what do we make him?

The ink out of many makes it out of iron, rust and tears, but that's the common sort.

And women the best authorities uses their own blood.

Jim can do that.

And when he wants to send any little common, ordinary, mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated he can ride it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window.

The iron mask always done that.

And it's a blame good way, too.

Jim ain't got no tin plates.

They feed him in a pan.

That ain't nothing.

We can get him some.

Can't nobody read his plates.

That ain't got nothing to do with it, Huck Finn.

All he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out.

You don't have to be able to read it.

Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate or anywhere else.

Well, then what's the sense in wasting the plates?

Why blame it all?

It ain't the prisoner's plates.

But it's somebody's plates, ain't it?

Well, supposing it is, what does the prisoner care who's he broke off there?

Because we heard the breakfast horn blowing so we cleared out for the house along during the morning.

I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of a clothesline and I found an old sack and put them in it.

And we went down and got the fox fire and put that in too.

I called it borrowing because that was what PAP always called it.

But Tom said it weren't borrowing, it was stealing.

He said we was representing prisoners and prisoners don't care how they get a thing, so they get it and nobody don't blame them for it either.

It ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal a thing he needs to get away with.

Tom said it's his right.

And so as long as we was representing a prisoner we had the perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with.

He said if we weren't prisoners, it would be a very different thing.

And nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he weren't a prisoner.

So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy.

And yet he made a mighty fuss one day after that when I stole a watermelon out of the servant patch and eat it.

And he made me go and give the servants a dime without telling them what it was for.

Tom said that what he meant was we could steal anything we needed.

Well, I says, I needed the watermelon, but he said I didn't need it to get out of prison with.

There is where the difference was.

He said if I'd wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to Jim to kill the Senate school with, it would have been all right.

So I let it go.

With that, though, I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to sit down and chaw over a lot of gold leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business and nobody inside around the yard.

Then Tommy carried the sack into the lean to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch.

By and by he come out and we went and sat down on the wood pile to talk.

He says, everything's all right now except tools and that's easy fixed.

Tools?

I says.

Yes, tools for what?

Why, to dig with.

We ain't going to gnaw him out, are we?

Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a servant out with?

I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says, Huck Finn, did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with?

Now, I want to ask you if you got any reasonableness in you at all.

What kind of a show would that give him to be a hero?

Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it.

Picks and shovels?

Why, they wouldn't furnish him to a king.

Well, then, I says, if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?

A couple of case knives to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?

Yes, confound it.

It's foolish, Tom.

It'll make no difference how foolish it is.

It's the right way and it's the regular way, and there ain't no other way that ever I heard of.

And I've read all the books that gives any information about these things.

They always dig out with a case knife, and not through dirt, mind you.

Generally it's through solid rock.

And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks and forever endeavor.

Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deep in the harbor of Marsales that dug himself out that way.

How long was he at it, you reckon?

I don't know.

Well, guess.

I don't know.

A month and a half.

37 year and he come out in China.

That's the kind I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock.

Jim don't know anybody in China.

What's that got to do with it?

Neither did that other fellow.

But you're always wandering off on a side issue.

Why can't you stick to the main point?

All right.

I don't care where he comes out, so he comes out.

And Jim don't either, I reckon.

But there's one thing anyway.

Jim's too old to be dug out with a case knife.

He won't last as he will last, too.

You don't reckon it's going to take 37 years to dig through a dirt foundation, do you?

How long will it take, Tom?

Well, we can't risk being as long as we ought to because it mayn't take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there.

By New Orleans, he'll hear Jim ain't from there.

Then his next move will be to advertise Jim or something like that.

So we can't risk being as long digging him out as we ought to.

By rights, I reckon we ought to be a couple of years.

But we can't, things being so uncertain.

What I recommend is this that we really dig right in as quick as we can.

And after that, we can let on to ourselves that we was out at 37 years.

Then we can s***** him out and rush away the first time there's an alarm.

Yes, I reckon that'll be the best way.

Now, there's sense in that.

I says, letting on don't cost nothing.

Letting on ain't no trouble, and if it's any object, I don't mind letting on.

We was at 150 here.

It wouldn't strain me none after I got my hand in it's.

All mosey along now and smouch a couple of case knives.

Smouch three, he says.

We want one to make a saw out of Tom if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it.

I says, there's an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smokehouse.

He looked kind of weary and discouraged like, and says, it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, hawk.

Run along and smoutch the knives.

Three of them.

So I'd done it.

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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