Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder
across the desert, perfectly plain, trees and all, just
the same as it was before. I says:
“I reckon you’re satisfied now, Tom Sawyer.”
But he says, perfectly ca’m:
“Yes, satisfied there ain’t no lake there.”
Jim says:
“DON’T talk so, Mars Tom — it sk’yers me to hear
you. It’s so hot, en you’s so thirsty, dat you ain’t in
yo’ right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but don’t she look
good! ‘clah I doan’ know how I’s gwine to wait tell
we gits dah, I’s SO thirsty.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait; and it won’t do you no
good, either, because there ain’t no lake there, I tell
you.”
I says:
“Jim, don’t you take your eye off of it, and I
won’t, either.”
“‘Deed I won’t; en bless you, honey, I couldn’t ef
I wanted to.”
We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles
behind us like nothing, but never gaining an inch on it
— and all of a sudden it was gone again! Jim stag-
gered, and ‘most fell down. When he got his breath
he says, gasping like a fish:
“Mars Tom, hit’s a GHOS’, dat’s what it is, en I
hopes to goodness we ain’t gwine to see it no mo’.
Dey’s BEEN a lake, en suthin’s happened, en de lake’s
dead, en we’s seen its ghos’; we’s seen it twiste, en
dat’s proof. De desert’s ha’nted, it’s ha’nted, sho;
oh, Mars Tom, le”s git outen it; I’d ruther die den
have de night ketch us in it ag’in en de ghos’ er dat
lake come a-mournin’ aroun’ us en we asleep en doan’
know de danger we’s in.”
“Ghost, you gander! It ain’t anything but air and
heat and thirstiness pasted together by a person’s
imagination. If I — gimme the glass!”
He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.
“It’s a flock of birds,” he says. “It’s getting
toward sundown, and they’re making a bee-line across
our track for somewheres. They mean business —
maybe they’re going for food or water, or both. Let
her go to starboard! — Port your hellum! Hard down!
There — ease up — steady, as you go.”
We shut down some of the power, so as not to out-
speed them, and took out after them. We went skim-
ming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and when
we had followed them an hour and a half and was get-
ting pretty discouraged, and was thirsty clean to
unendurableness, Tom says:
“Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is,
away ahead of the birds.”
Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the
locker sick. He was most crying, and says:
“She’s dah ag’in, Mars Tom, she’s dah ag’in, en I
knows I’s gwine to die, ‘case when a body sees a ghos’
de third time, dat’s what it means. I wisht I’d never
come in dis balloon, dat I does.”
He wouldn’t look no more, and what he said made
me afraid, too, because I knowed it was true, for that
has always been the way with ghosts; so then I
wouldn’t look any more, either. Both of us begged
Tom to turn off and go some other way, but he
wouldn’t, and said we was ignorant superstitious
blatherskites. Yes, and he’ll git come up with, one
of these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that
way. They’ll stand it for a while, maybe, but they
won’t stand it always, for anybody that knows about
ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revenge-
ful they are.
So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being
scared, and Tom busy. By and by Tom fetched the
balloon to a standstill, and says:
“NOW get up and look, you sapheads.”
We done it, and there was the sure-enough water
right under us! — clear, and blue, and cool, and deep,
and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest sight that ever
was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers,
and shady groves of big trees, looped together with
vines, and all looking so peaceful and comfortable —