fifths. Jim he didn’t quite like that arrangement. He
says:
“Course I’s de stronges’, en I’s willin’ to do a share
accordin’, but by jings you’s kinder pilin’ it onto ole
Jim, Mars Tom, hain’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t think so, Jim, but you try your hand
at fixing it, and let’s see.”
So Jim reckoned it wouldn’t be no more than fair if
me and Tom done a TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his
back to git room and be private, and then he smole a
smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara
to the westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where
we come from. Then he turned around again and
said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was
satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.
So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the
bow and left the rest for Jim, and it surprised Jim a
good deal to see how much difference there was and
what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said
he was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time
and got the first arrangement altered, for he said that
even the way it was now, there was more sand than
enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.
Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and
tough; so hot we had to move up into cooler weather
or we couldn’t ‘a’ stood it. Me and Tom took turn
about, and one worked while t’other rested, but there
warn’t nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all
that part of Africa damp, he sweated so. We couldn’t
work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he kept
fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and
we had to keep making up things to account for it, and
they was pretty poor inventions, but they done well
enough, Jim didn’t see through them. At last when
we got done we was ‘most dead, but not with work
but with laughing. By and by Jim was ‘most dead,
too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and
spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be,
and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and
heave and pant, and say how good we was to a poor
old nigger, and he wouldn’t ever forgit us. He was
always the gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little
thing you done for him. He was only nigger outside;
inside he was as white as you be.
CHAPTER XII.
JIM STANDING SIEGE
THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that
don’t make no difference when you are hungry;
and when you ain’t it ain’t no satisfaction to eat, any-
way, and so a little grit in the meat ain’t no particular
drawback, as far as I can see.
Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last,
sailing on a northeast course. Away off on the edge
of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see three little
sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:
“It’s the pyramids of Egypt.”
It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen
a many and a many a picture of them, and heard tell
about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them
all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, ‘stead
of imaginations, ‘most knocked the breath out of me
with surprise. It’s a curious thing, that the more you
hear about a grand and big and bully thing or person,
the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and
gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moon-
shine and nothing solid to it. It’s just so with George
Washington, and the same with them pyramids.
And moreover, besides, the thing they always said
about them seemed to me to be stretchers. There was
a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and had a
picture of them, and made a speech, and said the big-
gest pyramid covered thirteen acres, and was most five