Tom Sawyer Abroad | Page 9

for a tree till he
got nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it.
Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too,
and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. But the minute we
started to skip out the professor says, "No, you don't!" and shot her up
in the air again. It was awful. I begun to beg, and so did Jim; but it only
give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild out of
his eyes, and I was scared of him.
Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled
about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and

especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and at
their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of order.
Get out of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn't any more
get out of order than the solar sister.
He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me
the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to
yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have
his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail
his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he
would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was
the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on!
He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the
boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works,
and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if any-
body come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.
We set scrunched up together, and thought consider- able, but didn't
say much -- only just a word once in a while when a body had to say
something or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged
along slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine
made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and
homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be
down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and
never left a track.
Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had
a late feel, and a late smell, too -- about a two-o'clock feel, as near as I
could make out -- Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he
must be asleep, and we'd better --
"Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I
knowed what he was thinking about.
"Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says.
I says: "No, sir! Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer."

And Jim -- well, Jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. He says:
"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's gone -- we's gone
sho'! I ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom,
he's plumb crazy."
Tom whispers and says -- "That's WHY we've got to do something. If
he wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you
couldn't hire me to get out -- now that I've got used to this balloon and
over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground -- if he was in
his right mind. But it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a
person that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and
then drown us all. We've GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it
before he wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. Come!"
But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we
wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see
if he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and
begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands
and knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our
breath and watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept
slower than ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see
him get to the