Tom said every famous prisoner left sad words on the wall of his dungeon, and his coat of arms too.
“But I don’t have a coat of arms, Master Tom,” Jim said. “I only have this old shirt, and I need it for my diary.”
“You don’t understand, Jim. You’ll have one before you leave here, because you’re going to escape the right way.”
So Tom made up a coat of arms, full of strange old words I had never heard. “What does it all mean?” I asked. “What’s a bar sinister?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But he’s got to have one. All the nobility have one.”
Then he wrote some sad words for Jim, like these: “Here a poor prisoner, without home or friends, died after thirty-seven years in prison.” His voice shook while he read them, and he almost cried. Jim said it would take him a year to scratch all that into the logs with a nail, and besides, he couldn’t write. Tom said he would draw the letters for him.
“But wait,” Tom said. “Dungeons don’t have log walls. We need a rock. There’s a big grindstone down at the mill.”
That night we went to the mill and started to roll the grindstone home. It kept falling over and almost crushed us, and halfway home we were too tired to go on. So we went and got Jim. He slid his chain off the bed leg, wrapped it around his neck and crawled out through our tunnel. Jim and I rolled the stone along easily, and Tom gave the orders. Tom could give orders better than any boy I ever saw. We got the stone into the hut, and Jim started to carve the words with a nail.
Then Tom thought of something else. “Do you have any spiders in here, Jim? And what about a rattlesnake? You could tame it. In a few days it would love you and sleep with you.”
“Please, Master Tom, don’t talk like that! If you and Huck bring me a rattlesnake, I’m leaving, and that’s for sure.”
“Well, all right, if you’re so stubborn. We’ll get you some harmless little snakes, and you can pretend they’re rattlesnakes. And rats. Prisoners always have rats. You can play music to them.”
“I don’t want any rats, Master Tom. They run over a man and bite his feet when he’s trying to sleep.”
“Play them sad music on your jaw harp, and they’ll all come out to see what’s wrong with you, and have a fine time.”
“Yes, they’ll have a good time,” said Jim. “But what kind of time is Jim having?”
Tom wasn’t finished. Jim had to grow a flower in the corner and water it with his tears.
“But I have plenty of water from the spring, Master Tom. And I hardly ever cry.”
So Tom said Jim would have to use an onion. Jim complained so much about the flower and the rats and the snakes and all his other work that Tom almost lost his patience. He said Jim had more chances to make a name for himself than any prisoner in the world, and he didn’t know how to value them. Then Jim was sorry and said he wouldn’t complain any more.