That evening the family was so worried they sent us to bed right after supper and didn’t tell us why, but we knew as much about the letter as they did. At half past eleven we got up, and Tom got out Aunt Sally’s dress, which he had stolen for Jim.
“Where’s the butter?” he said.
“I left it in the cellar, on some corn bread.”
“Then go and get it, and come down the lightning rod. I’ll go and get Jim ready.”
I got the bread and butter and started up the cellar stairs very quietly, but at the top I saw Aunt Sally coming with a candle. I put the bread and butter in my hat and put my hat on my head.
“What were you doing in the cellar, Tom? March into the sitting room and stay there until I come.”
I opened the door, and my heart nearly stopped. Fifteen farmers were in the room, and every one of them had a gun. I sat down and didn’t take my hat off.
At last Aunt Sally came and started asking questions, but I couldn’t answer properly. Some of the men wanted to go and hide in the hut now, because it was almost midnight. The room was getting hotter and hotter, and the butter began to melt. Then melted butter started running down my forehead. Aunt Sally saw it and turned as white as a sheet.
“Oh, what is wrong with the child? He has brain fever, and his brains are coming out!”
She pulled off my hat, and out came the bread and what was left of the butter. She hugged me. “Oh, what a scare you gave me! Why didn’t you tell me that was all? Now go to bed!”
I was upstairs in a second and down the lightning rod in another. I ran to Tom and told him the house was full of men with guns.
His eyes shone. “Really? Isn’t it great!”
But then we heard men at the door of the hut. They came in, but they couldn’t see us in the dark. We got under the bed and out through the tunnel, Jim first, then me, then Tom, and crept to the fence. Jim and I got over, but Tom’s pants caught on a splinter, and it broke with a crack.
“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”
We ran. There was a bang, bang, bang, and bullets flew all around us. “After them, boys! Let the dogs loose!”
We hid in the bushes and let the men run past. The dogs came too, but they knew us, so they only said hello and ran on toward the noise. We got to my canoe and paddled to the island where the raft was.
When we stepped onto the raft, I said, “Now, old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you’ll never be a slave again.”
“And it was a fine job, Huck. It was planned beautifully, and it was done beautifully.”
We were all as happy as we could be, but Tom was the happiest of all, because he had a bullet in his leg.
When Jim and I heard that, we didn’t feel so proud any more. It was bleeding badly. We laid him in the shelter and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for a bandage.
“Don’t stop now!” Tom said. “Set the raft loose! Boys, we did it beautifully!”
But Jim and I were thinking. After a minute I said, “Tell him, Jim.”
“Well, this is how it looks to me, Huck. If he was the one being set free, and one of the boys got shot, would he say, ‘Go on and save me, never mind a doctor for him’? Is that like Master Tom Sawyer? No, it isn’t. So is Jim going to say it? No, sir. I won’t move a step from this place without a doctor, not if it takes forty years!”
I knew Jim had a good heart, and I knew he would say that. So I told Tom I was going for a doctor. Tom was very angry, but we didn’t change our minds. When he saw me getting the canoe ready, he said:
“Well, if you have to go, do it right. Blindfold the doctor, make him promise to be as silent as the grave and bring him here the long way through the islands. That’s how they always do it.”
So I said I would and left. Jim was going to hide in the woods when he saw the doctor coming.