At daybreak we hid the raft by the Illinois shore and covered it with branches. We lay there all day and watched the steamboats go up and down the river. I told Jim all about the woman. Jim said she was a smart one. If she went after us herself, she wouldn’t sit and watch a campfire. No, she would bring a dog.
When it got dark, Jim built a little shelter on the raft, to keep us and our things dry. In the middle of it we made a place for a fire. We hung up the old lantern too, because we had to light it whenever a steamboat came down the river, so it wouldn’t run over us.
From then on we floated all night and hid all day. It was kind of quiet and serious, floating down the big, still river at night, lying on our backs and looking up at the stars. We didn’t feel like talking loud. One night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world was lit up.
Every night I went ashore at some little village and bought ten or fifteen cents’ worth of corn meal or bacon. Sometimes I took a chicken too, and before daylight I borrowed a watermelon or some corn from the fields. Pap always said it was no harm to borrow things if you meant to pay them back some day. But the widow said that was just a soft name for stealing. Jim said maybe the widow was partly right and Pap was partly right. So we decided to stop borrowing crab apples and persimmons, and then it was all right to borrow the rest. I was glad, because crab apples are never good, and the persimmons wouldn’t be ripe for months anyway.
One night there was a big storm. In the lightning we saw a steamboat ahead. It had hit a rock and was lying in the middle of the river, leaning over to one side. We were floating straight toward it.
“Let’s go on board, Jim,” I said.
“I don’t want to go fooling around a wreck,” Jim said. “We’re doing fine, and we should leave things alone. There might be a watchman on it.”
“A watchman! Nobody is going to risk his life on a night like this, when the wreck could break up any minute. And we might find something good in the captain’s room. Do you think Tom Sawyer would go by a thing like this? He’d call it an adventure. I wish Tom Sawyer was here.”
Jim grumbled a little, but he gave in. We left the canoe tied to the raft, tied the raft to the wreck and crept along the sloping deck in the dark. Then we saw a light and heard low voices inside.
Jim whispered that he felt sick and went back to the raft. I was going to follow him, but then I heard somebody cry:
“Oh, please don’t, boys! I swear I won’t ever tell!”
Tom Sawyer wouldn’t go back now, I thought, so I won’t either. I crept closer on my hands and knees. In a room I saw a man lying on the floor, tied hand and foot. Two men stood over him. One had a lantern, and the other kept pointing a pistol at the man’s head. From their talk I learned that the man on the floor was Jim Turner, and the other two were Bill and Packard.
Then Packard started toward me, with Bill behind him. I crawled into an empty room, climbed into the top bed and lay still. They came into that same room and talked low. I didn’t breathe. Bill wanted to kill Turner, because Turner was going to tell on them. But Packard had a quieter plan. They would take everything they could find, go ashore and wait. In two hours the wreck would break up and wash down the river, and Turner would drown, tied up. Then nobody could blame them.
As soon as they left, I crept back in the dark, as fast as I could. Jim was there.
“Quick, Jim! There’s a gang of murderers in there. We have to find their boat and push it out on the river, so they can’t get off the wreck. Then the sheriff will get them. You start at the raft and—”
“Oh, Huck! The raft is gone! It broke loose and floated away, and here we are!”