Chapter 38

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job,
and so was the saw; and Jim allowed the in-
scription was going to be the toughest of all. That's
the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall.
But he had to have it; Tom said he'd GOT to; there
warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his
inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.

"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at
Gilford Dudley; look at old Northumberland! Why,
Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble? -- what you
going to do? -- how you going to get around it?
Jim's GOT to do his inscription and coat of arms. They
all do."

Jim says:

"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I
hain't got nuffn but dish yer ole shirt, en you knows
I got to keep de journal on dat."

"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is
very different."

"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he
says he ain't got no coat of arms, because he hain't."

"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you
bet he'll have one before he goes out of this -- because
he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to be no
flaws in his record."

So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a
brickbat apiece, Jim a-making his'n out of the brass
and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work
to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd
struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know
which to take, but there was one which he reckoned
he'd decide on. He says:

"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the
dexter base, a saltire MURREY in the fess, with a dog,
couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a
chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a
chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field
AZURE, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette
indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE, with his
bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a
couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me;
motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE OTTO. Got it out of a
book -- means the more haste the less speed."

"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of
it mean?"

"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he
says; "we got to dig in like all git-out."

"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it?
What's a fess?"

"A fess -- a fess is -- YOU don't need to know what
a fess is. I'll show him how to make it when he gets
to it."

"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a
person. What's a bar sinister?"

"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All
the nobility does."

That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to ex-
plain a thing to you, he