distribute them around. Man did that.”
“Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?”
“Certainly.”
“Who tole him he could?”
“Nobody. He never asked.”
Jim studied a minute, and says:
“Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn’t ‘a’ tuck no
sich resk. But some people ain’t scared o’ nothin’.
Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don’t care what happens.
So den dey’s allays an hour’s diff’unce everywhah,
Mars Tom?”
“An hour? No! It’s four minutes difference for
every degree of longitude, you know. Fifteen of ’em’s
an hour, thirty of ’em’s two hours, and so on. When
it’s one clock Tuesday morning in England, it’s eight
o’clock the night before in New York.”
Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you
could see he was insulted. He kept shaking his head
and muttering, and so I slid along to him and patted
him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over
the worst of his feelings, and then he says:
“Mars Tom talkin’ sich talk as dat! Choosday in
one place en Monday in t’other, bofe in the same day!
Huck, dis ain’t no place to joke — up here whah we is.
Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two
days inter one day? Can’t git two hours inter one
hour, kin you? Can’t git two niggers inter one nigger
skin, kin you? Can’t git two gallons of whisky inter a
one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, ‘twould strain de
jug. Yes, en even den you couldn’t, I don’t believe.
Why, looky here, Huck, s’posen de Choosday was
New Year’s — now den! is you gwine to tell me it’s
dis year in one place en las’ year in t’other, bofe in de
identical same minute? It’s de beatenest rubbage! I
can’t stan’ it — I can’t stan’ to hear tell ’bout it.”
Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom
says:
“NOW what’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”
Jim could hardly speak, but he says:
“Mars Tom, you ain’t jokin’, en it’s SO?”
“No, I’m not, and it is so.”
Jim shivered again, and says:
“Den dat Monday could be de las’ day, en dey
wouldn’t be no las’ day in England, en de dead
wouldn’t be called. We mustn’t go over dah, Mars
Tom. Please git him to turn back; I wants to be
whah –”
All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped
up, and forgot everything and begun to gaze. Tom
says:
“Ain’t that the –” He catched his breath, then
says: “It IS, sure as you live! It’s the ocean!”
That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then
we all stood petrified but happy, for none of us had
ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to. Tom kept
muttering:
“Atlantic Ocean — Atlantic. Land, don’t it sound
great! And that’s IT — and WE are looking at it — we!
Why, it’s just too splendid to believe!”
Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when
we got nearer, it was a city — and a monster she was,
too, with a thick fringe of ships around one edge; and
we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw
and dispute about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from
under us and went flying behind, and here we was, out
over the very ocean itself, and going like a cyclone.
Then we woke up, I tell you!
We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to
beg the professor to turn back and land us, but
he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back,
and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we
felt.
The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a
snake, away off on the edge of the water, and down
under us was just ocean, ocean, ocean — millions of
miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and
white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a
few ships in sight, wallowing around and laying over,
first on one side and then on t’other, and sticking their
bows under and then their sterns; and before long