Tom Sawyer Abroad eBook

The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down.  One second you couldn’t see your hand before you, and the next you could count the threads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain.  A storm like that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain’t at its best when you are up in the sky and lost, and it’s wet and lonesome, and there’s just been a death in the family.

We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could, and hadn’t a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from brooding his mind away and going deranged.  There was plenty of clothes and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we’d ruther take the rain than go meddling back there.

CHAPTER V. LAND

We tried to make some plans, but we couldn’t come to no agreement.  Me and Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up.  The sea was sparkling like di’monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all dry again.

We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood.  Then Tom was disturbed.  He says: 

“You know what that means, easy enough.  It means that somebody has got to stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she’ll wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to.”

“Well,” I says, “what’s she been doing since—­er—­since we had the accident?”

“Wandering,” he says, kinder troubled—­“wandering, without any doubt.  She’s in a wind now that’s blowing her south of east.  We don’t know how long that’s been going on, either.”

So then he p’inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we rousted out the breakfast.  The professor had laid in everything a body could want; he couldn’t ‘a’ been better fixed.  There wasn’t no milk for the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches; and wine and liquor, which warn’t in our line; and books, and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages.  There was money, too.  Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.