The next day we stopped by a little island in the middle of the river, with a village on each side, and the king and the duke began to plan how to make money there. Jim asked the duke not to take too long, because it was hard for him to lie tied up in the shelter all day. We had to tie him when we left him alone, or he wouldn’t look like a caught runaway.
The duke soon found a way. He dressed Jim in King Lear’s costume from the show, a long gown with a white wig and beard, and painted his face, hands and neck a dull, dark blue, like a man who has been in the river for nine days. I never saw anything so horrible. Then he stood a sign in front of the shelter:
*Sick Arab—but harmless when not out of his head.*
Jim was happy. If anybody came near, the duke told him, he must jump out and howl like a wild animal. That was good advice, but most people wouldn’t wait for the howl. Jim didn’t only look dead. He looked a lot worse than that.
The king put on the new black clothes he had bought at the last town and told me to put mine on too. I never knew clothes could change a person so much. Before, he looked like the meanest old man in the world; now, when he took off his hat and bowed and smiled, he looked so good and holy that you would think he had walked straight out of the Bible.
“Paddle up to that steamboat, Huckleberry,” he said. “Dressed like this, I had better arrive in the village on a big boat.”
On the way we passed a young man from the country, sitting on a log beside two big bags. He was going to New Orleans on the steamboat.
“Get in,” said the king. “My servant will help you with those bags. Help the gentleman, Adolphus.” He meant me.
The young man was very thankful. When he first saw the king, he said, he thought it was Mr. Wilks’s brother from England, who had come just too late. Then he told us everything. Peter Wilks, a rich man in the town, had died last night. He had two brothers in England: Harvey, a preacher in Sheffield, and William, who was deaf and couldn’t speak. Peter had sent for them when he got sick, but they hadn’t come. He had left a letter for Harvey that told where his money was hidden. Peter also had three nieces: Mary Jane, who was nineteen and had red hair, Susan, fifteen, and Joanna, fourteen.
The king kept asking questions about everybody in the town until he had learned all he could from that young man. Then he asked, “Was Peter Wilks rich?”
“Oh, yes. He had houses and land, and people say he left three or four thousand dollars in cash hidden somewhere.”
We left the young man at the steamboat, but the king didn’t go on board after all. He had me paddle him to a lonely place on the bank and sent me back for the duke. I saw what he was planning, but of course I said nothing. When I came back with the duke, the king told him everything the young man had said, every word, and all the time he talked like an Englishman. He did it pretty well, too. The duke said he had played a deaf man who couldn’t speak in the theater. That afternoon the king, the duke and I took a big steamboat down to the village.
About two dozen men came to the landing. The king said, “Can any of you gentlemen tell me where Mr. Peter Wilks lives?”
The men looked at one another. Then one of them said softly, “I’m sorry, sir, but the best we can do is tell you where he lived until yesterday evening.”
At once the old fraud fell against the man and cried on his shoulder. “Oh, our poor brother! He’s gone, and we never saw him! Oh, it’s too hard!”
Then he turned to the duke and made a lot of silly signs with his hands, and the duke dropped a bag and burst out crying too. The men carried their bags up the hill and told the king all about his brother’s last hours, and both of them cried about that dead man as if they had lost the twelve disciples. I never met two frauds like them. It was enough to make a person ashamed of the human race.