have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean.
He said he would sail his balloon around the globe just
to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in
the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was
the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming
on!
He give us something to eat, and made us go to the
other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker,
where he could boss all the works, and put his old
pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if any-
body come fooling around there trying to land her, he
would kill him.
We set scrunched up together, and thought consider-
able, but didn’t say much — only just a word once in a
while when a body had to say something or bust, we
was so scared and worried. The night dragged along
slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the
moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the
farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could
hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down
there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like
a ghost, and never left a track.
Away in the night, when all the sounds was late
sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell,
too — about a two-o’clock feel, as near as I could make
out — Tom said the professor was so quiet this time
he must be asleep, and we’d better —
“Better what?” I says in a whisper, and feeling sick
all over, because I knowed what he was thinking about.
“Better slip back there and tie him, and land the
ship,” he says.
I says: “No, sir! Don’ you budge, Tom Sawyer.”
And Jim — well, Jim was kind o’ gasping, he was so
scared. He says:
“Oh, Mars Tom, DON’T! Ef you teches him, we’s
gone — we’s gone sho’! I ain’t gwine anear him, not
for nothin’ in dis worl’. Mars Tom, he’s plumb crazy.”
Tom whispers and says — “That’s WHY we’ve got to
do something. If he wasn’t crazy I wouldn’t give
shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn’t hire me
to get out — now that I’ve got used to this balloon and
over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground
— if he was in his right mind. But it’s no good politics,
sailing around like this with a person that’s out of his
head, and says he’s going round the world and then
drown us all. We’ve GOT to do something, I tell you,
and do it before he wakes up, too, or we mayn’t ever
get another chance. Come!”
But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of
it, and we said we wouldn’t budge. So Tom was for
slipping back there by himself to see if he couldn’t get
at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and
begged him not to, but it warn’t no use; so he got
down on his hands and knees, and begun to crawl an
inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and watching.
After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower
than ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at
last we see him get to the professor’s head, and sort
of raise up soft and look a good spell in his face and
listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again
toward the professor’s feet where the steering-buttons
was. Well, he got there all safe, and was reaching
slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked
down something that made a noise, and we see him
slump down flat an’ soft in the bottom, and lay still.
The professor stirred, and says, “What’s that?” But
everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to
mutter and mumble and nestle, like a person that’s
going to wake up, and I thought I was going to die, I
was so worried and scared.
Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I ‘most cried,