“What does pirates have to do?”
Tom said:
“Oh, they have just a bully time—take
ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it
in awful places in their island where there’s
ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in
the ships—make ’em walk a plank.”
“And they carry the women to the island,”
said Joe; “they don’t kill the women.”
“No,” assented Tom, “they don’t
kill the women—they’re too noble.
And the women’s always beautiful, too.
“And don’t they wear the bulliest clothes!
Oh no! All gold and silver and di’monds,”
said Joe, with enthusiasm.
“Who?” said Huck.
“Why, the pirates.”
Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.
“I reckon I ain’t dressed fitten for a
pirate,” said he, with a regretful pathos in
his voice; “but I ain’t got none but these.”
But the other boys told him the fine clothes would
come fast enough, after they should have begun their
adventures. They made him understand that his
poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary
for wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began
to steal upon the eyelids of the little waifs.
The pipe dropped from the fingers of the Red-Handed,
and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the
weary. The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger
of the Spanish Main had more difficulty in getting
to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly, and
lying down, since there was nobody there with authority
to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they
had a mind not to say them at all, but they were afraid
to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they might
call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven.
Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent
verge of sleep—but an intruder came, now,
that would not “down.” It was conscience.
They began to feel a vague fear that they had been
doing wrong to run away; and next they thought of
the stolen meat, and then the real torture came.
They tried to argue it away by reminding conscience
that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores
of times; but conscience was not to be appeased by
such thin plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the
end, that there was no getting around the stubborn
fact that taking sweetmeats was only “hooking,”
while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was
plain simple stealing—and there was a command
against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved
that so long as they remained in the business, their
piracies should not again be sullied with the crime
of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce,
and these curiously inconsistent pirates fell peacefully
to sleep.
When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where
he was. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked
around. Then he comprehended. It was the
cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of
repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence
of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound
obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation.
Beaded dewdrops stood upon the leaves and grasses.
A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin
blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air.
Joe and Huck still slept.
