Chapter 21

CHAPTER XXI.

IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and
didn't tie up. The king and the duke turned out
by and by looking pretty rusty; but after they'd
jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them
up a good deal. After breakfast the king he took a
seat on the corner of the raft, and pulled off his boots
and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle in
the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and
went to getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When
he had got it pretty good him and the duke begun to
practice it together. The duke had to learn him over
and over again how to say every speech; and he made
him sigh, and put his hand on his heart, and after a
while he said he done it pretty well; "only," he says,
"you mustn't bellow out ROMEO! that way, like a
bull -- you must say it soft and sick and languishy,
so -- R-o-o-meo! that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear
sweet mere child of a girl, you know, and she doesn't
bray like a jackass."

Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that
the duke made out of oak laths, and begun to practice
the sword fight -- the duke called himself Richard
III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around
the raft was grand to see. But by and by the king
tripped and fell overboard, and after that they took a
rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures
they'd had in other times along the river.

After dinner the duke says:

"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class
show, you know, so I guess we'll add a little more to
it. We want a little something to answer encores
with, anyway."

"What's onkores, Bilgewater?"

The duke told him, and then says:

"I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the
sailor's hornpipe; and you -- well, let me see -- oh,
I've got it -- you can do Hamlet's soliloquy."

"Hamlet's which?"

"Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated
thing in Shakespeare. Ah, it's sublime, sublime! Al-
ways fetches the house. I haven't got it in the book
-- I've only got one volume -- but I reckon I can
piece it out from memory. I'll just walk up and down
a minute, and see if I can call it back from recollec-
tion's vaults."

So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and
frowning horrible every now and then; then he would
hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand
on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan;
next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a
tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got
it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a
most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and
his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted back,