Making them pens was a distressid tough job,
and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the inscription
was going to be the toughest of all. That’s
the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the
wall. But he had to have it; Tom said he’d
got to; there warn’t no case of a state
prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind,
and his coat of arms.
“Look at Lady Jane Grey,” he says; “look
at Gilford Dudley; look at old Northumberland!
Why, Huck, s’pose it is considerble trouble?—what
you going to do?—how you going to get around
it? Jim’s got to do his inscription
and coat of arms. They all do.”
Jim says:
“Why, Mars Tom, I hain’t got no coat o’
arm; I hain’t got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt,
en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, Jim; a coat
of arms is very different.”
“Well,” I says, “Jim’s right,
anyway, when he says he ain’t got no coat of
arms, because he hain’t.”
“I reckon I knowed that,” Tom says, “but
you bet he’ll have one before he goes out of
this—because he’s going out right,
and there ain’t going to be no flaws in his
record.”
So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat
apiece, Jim a-making his’n out of the brass
and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work
to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said
he’d struck so many good ones he didn’t
hardly know which to take, but there was one which
he reckoned he’d decide on. He says:
“On the scutcheon we’ll have a bend or
in the dexter base, a saltire Murrey in the fess,
with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron
Vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected
lines on a field Azure, with the nombril points
rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger,
Sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a
bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters,
which is you and me; motto, Maggiore FRETTA, MINORE
Otto. Got it out of a book—means
the more haste the less speed.”
“Geewhillikins,” I says, “but what
does the rest of it mean?”
“We ain’t got no time to bother over that,”
he says; “we got to dig in like all git-out.”
“Well, anyway,” I says, “what’s
some of it? What’s a fess?”
“A fess—a fess is—you
don’t need to know what a fess is. I’ll
show him how to make it when he gets to it.”
“Shucks, Tom,” I says, “I think
you might tell a person. What’s a bar
sinister?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But he’s
got to have it. All the nobility does.”
That was just his way. If it didn’t suit
him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn’t do
it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn’t
make no difference.
