TOM SAWYER ABROAD

there warn’t no ships at all, and we had the sky and

the whole ocean all to ourselves, and the roomiest place

I ever see and the lonesomest.

CHAPTER IV.

STORM

AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was

the big sky up there, empty and awful deep; and

the ocean down there without a thing on it but just the

waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and

the water come together; yes, a monstrous big ring it

was, and we right in the dead center of it — plumb in

the center. We was racing along like a prairie fire, but

it never made any difference, we couldn’t seem to git

past that center no way. I couldn’t see that we ever

gained an inch on that ring. It made a body feel

creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable.

Well, everything was so awful still that we got to

talking in a very low voice, and kept on getting creepier

and lonesomer and less and less talky, till at last the

talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there and

“thunk,” as Jim calls it, and never said a word the

longest time.

The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead,

then he stood up and put a kind of triangle to his eye,

and Tom said it was a sextant and he was taking the

sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he

ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he

begun to carry on again. He said lots of wild things,

and, among others, he said he would keep up this

hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow after-

noon, and then he’d land in London.

We said we would be humbly thankful.

He was turning away, but he whirled around when

we said that, and give us a long look of his blackest

kind — one of the maliciousest and suspiciousest looks

I ever see. Then he says:

“You want to leave me. Don’t try to deny it.”

We didn’t know what to say, so we held in and

didn’t say nothing at all.

He went aft and set down, but he couldn’t seem to

git that thing out of his mind. Every now and then he

would rip out something about it, and try to make us

answer him, but we dasn’t.

It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it

did seem to me I couldn’t stand it. It was still worse

when night begun to come on. By and by Tom

pinched me and whispers:

“Look!”

I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a

whet out of a bottle. I didn’t like the looks of that.

By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he

begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black

and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder,

and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to

wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it

was awful. It got so black we couldn’t see him any

more, and wished we couldn’t hear him, but we could.

Then he got still; but he warn’t still ten minutes till

we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his

noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by

there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to

get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard

him scream out in the dark:

“They don’t want to go to England. All right, I’ll

change the course. They want to leave me. I know

they do. Well, they shall — and NOW!”

I ‘most died when he said that. Then he was still

again — still so long I couldn’t bear it, and it did seem

to me the lightning wouldn’t EVER come again. But at

last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his

hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us.

My, but his eyes was terrible! He made a lunge for

Tom, and says, “Overboard YOU go!” but it was

already pitch-dark again, and I couldn’t see whether

he got him or not, and Tom didn’t make a sound.

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