It did seem a powerful long time before Jim’s
light showed up; and when it did show it looked like
it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got
there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in
the east; so we struck for an island, and hid the
raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept
like dead people.
CHAPTER XIV.
By and by, when we got up, we turned over the
truck the gang had stole off of the wreck, and found
boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all sorts of
other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and
three boxes of seegars. We hadn’t ever
been this rich before in neither of our lives.
The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon
in the woods talking, and me reading the books, and
having a general good time. I told Jim all about
what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat,
and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but
he said he didn’t want no more adventures.
He said that when I went in the texas and he crawled
back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly
died, because he judged it was all up with him
anyway it could be fixed; for if he didn’t get
saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved,
whoever saved him would send him back home so as to
get the reward, and then Miss Watson would sell him
South, sure. Well, he was right; he was most
always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger.
I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and
earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how
much style they put on, and called each other your
majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so
on, ’stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged
out, and he was interested. He says:
“I didn’ know dey was so many un um.
I hain’t hearn ’bout none un um, skasely,
but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings
dat’s in a pack er k’yards. How
much do a king git?”
“Get?” I says; “why, they get a
thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can
have just as much as they want; everything belongs
to them.”
“Ain’ dat gay? En what dey
got to do, Huck?”
“They don’t do nothing! Why,
how you talk! They just set around.”
“No; is dat so?”
“Of course it is. They just set around—except,
maybe, when there’s a war; then they go to the
war. But other times they just lazy around; or
go hawking—just hawking and sp—Sh!—d’
you hear a noise?”
We skipped out and looked; but it warn’t nothing
but the flutter of a steamboat’s wheel away
down, coming around the point; so we come back.
“Yes,” says I, “and other times,
when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment;
and if everybody don’t go just so he whacks their
heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem.”
“Roun’ de which?”
“Harem.”
“What’s de harem?”
“The place where he keeps his wives. Don’t
you know about the harem? Solomon had one; he
had about a million wives.”
