Chapter 12 Summary

Huck and Jim now leave the island. Sometimes, Huck slips ashore at night and buys supplies from a little village. They pick corn and watermelons and shoot waterfowl. In general, they are having a very easy time. Eventually, they encounter some heavy rain and a grounded steamboat that had crashed into a rock. Jim says to leave it, "Better let blame well alone." But Huck won't do that. It's just too much of an opportunity.

For a time, it seems like Jim was more right than wrong, for there are murderers and thieves aboard. Jake and Bill are about to kill Jim Turner, after taking his share of their loot. Huck overhears a consultation about whether they should actually murder him or just leave him there to die, when the steamboat finally is knocked over into the river. But when the decision is...