TOM SAWYER ABROAD

we would be so far toward England that we might as

well go there, and come back in a ship, and have the

glory of saying we done it.

About midnight the storm quit and the moon come

out and lit up the ocean, and we begun to feel com-

fortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the

lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again

till sun-up. The sea was sparkling like di’monds, and

it was nice weather, and pretty soon our things was all

dry again.

We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first

thing we noticed was that there was a dim light burning

in a compass back there under a hood. Then Tom was

disturbed. He says:

“You know what that means, easy enough. It

means that somebody has got to stay on watch and

steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she’ll

wander around and go wherever the wind wants her

to.”

“Well,” I says, “what’s she been doing since —

er — since we had the accident?”

“Wandering,” he says, kinder troubled –” wander-

ing, without any doubt. She’s in a wind now that’s

blowing her south of east. We don’t know how long

that’s been going on, either.”

So then he p’inted her east, and said he would hold

her there till we rousted out the breakfast. The pro-

fessor had laid in everything a body could want; he

couldn’t ‘a’ been better fixed. There wasn’t no milk

for the coffee, but there was water, and everything

else you could want, and a charcoal stove and the

fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and matches; and

wine and liquor, which warn’t in our line; and books,

and maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs,

and blankets, and no end of rubbish, like brass beads

and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure sign that

he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was

money, too. Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to

steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches,

turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I

took his place, and he got out the professor’s papers

and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, tell-

ing her everything that had happened to us, and dated

it “IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND,” and folded

it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and

directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big

writing, “FROM TOM SAWYER, THE ERRONORT,” and said

it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when

it come along in the mail. I says:

“Tom Sawyer, this ain’t no welkin, it’s a balloon.”

“Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?”

“You’ve wrote it on the letter, anyway.”

“What of it? That don’t mean that the balloon’s

the welkin.”

“Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a

welkin?”

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and

scraped around in his mind, but he couldn’t find noth-

ing, so he had to say:

“I don’t know, and nobody don’t know. It’s just

a word, and it’s a mighty good word, too. There

ain’t many that lays over it. I don’t believe there’s

ANY that does.”

“Shucks!” I says. “But what does it MEAN? —

that’s the p’int. ”

“I don’t know what it means, I tell you. It’s a

word that people uses for — for — well, it’s orna-

mental. They don’t put ruffles on a shirt to keep a

person warm, do they?”

“Course they don’t.”

“But they put them ON, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and

the welkin’s the ruffle on it.”

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

“Now, Mars Tom, it ain’t no use to talk like dat;

en, moreover, it’s sinful. You knows a letter ain’t no

shirt, en dey ain’t no ruffles on it, nuther. Dey ain’t

no place to put ’em on; you can’t put em on, and

dey wouldn’t stay ef you did.”

“Oh DO shut up, and wait till something’s started

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