Chapter 35

CHAPTER XXXV.

IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left
and struck down into the woods; because Tom said
we got to have SOME light to see how to dig by, and a
lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble;
what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks
that's called fox-fire, and just makes a soft kind of a
glow when you lay them in a dark place. We fetched
an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest,
and Tom says, kind of dissatisfied:

"Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and
awkward as it can be. And so it makes it so rotten
difficult to get up a difficult plan. There ain't no watch-
man to be drugged -- now there OUGHT to be a watch-
man. There ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mix-
ture to. And there's Jim chained by one leg, with a
ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you got
to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain.
And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key
to the punkin-headed nigger, and don't send nobody to
watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that window-
hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying
to travel with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat
it, Huck, it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see.
You got to invent ALL the difficulties. Well, we can't
help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials
we've got. Anyhow, there's one thing -- there's more
honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties
and dangers, where there warn't one of them furnished
to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish
them, and you had to contrive them all out of your
own head. Now look at just that one thing of the
lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we
simply got to LET ON that a lantern's resky. Why, we
could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted
to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of it, we got to
hunt up something to make a saw out of the first
chance we get."

"What do we want of a saw?"

"What do we WANT of a saw? Hain't we got to
saw the leg of Jim's bed off, so as to get the chain
loose?"

"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bed-
stead and slip the chain off."

"Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You
CAN get up the infant-schooliest ways of going at a
thing. Why, hain't you ever read any books at all?
-- Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chel-
leeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who
ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-
maidy way as that? No; the way all the best authori-
ties does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just
so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and
put some dirt and grease around