I was so glad. She buried herself deeper and deeper
into the cloud, and it got so dark we couldn’t see Tom.
Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the
professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing
the weather. We was afraid every minute he would
touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and no
help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when
we felt his hands on our knees my breath stopped
sudden, and my heart fell down ‘mongst my other works,
because I couldn’t tell in the dark but it might be the
professor! which I thought it WAS.
Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was
just as near happy as a person could be that was up in
the air that way with a deranged man. You can’t land
a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on
raining, for I didn’t want Tom to go meddling any
more and make us so awful uncomfortable. Well, I
got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along the rest
of the night, which wasn’t long, though it did seem so;
and at daybreak it cleared, and the world looked
mighty soft and gray and pretty, and the forests and
fields so good to see again, and the horses and cattle
standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a-
blazing up gay and splendid, and then we began to feel
rusty and stretchy, and first we knowed we was all
asleep.
CHAPTER III.
TOM EXPLAINS
WE went to sleep about four o’clock, and woke up
about eight. The professor was setting back
there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us some
breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship
compass. That was about the middle of the boat.
Well, when you are sharp-set, and you eat and satisfy
yourself, everything looks pretty different from what it
done before. It makes a body feel pretty near com-
fortable, even when he is up in a balloon with a genius.
We got to talking together.
There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by
and by I says:
“Tom, didn’t we start east?”
“Yes.”
“How fast have we been going?”
“Well, you heard what the professor said when he
was raging round. Sometimes, he said, we was making
fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety, sometimes a
hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make
three hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale,
and wanted it blowing the right direction, he only had
to go up higher or down lower to find it.”
“Well, then, it’s just as I reckoned. The professor
lied.”
“Why?”
“Because if we was going so fast we ought to be
past Illinois, oughtn’t we?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, we ain’t.”
“What’s the reason we ain’t?”
“I know by the color. We’re right over Illinois
yet. And you can see for yourself that Indiana ain’t
in sight.”
“I wonder what’s the matter with you, Huck. You
know by the COLOR?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“What’s the color got to do with it?”
“It’s got everything to do with it. Illinois is green,
Indiana is pink. You show me any pink down here,
if you can. No, sir; it’s green.”
“Indiana PINK? Why, what a lie!”
“It ain’t no lie; I’ve seen it on the map, and it’s
pink.”
You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted.
He says:
“Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck
Finn, I would jump over. Seen it on the map! Huck
Finn, did you reckon the States was the same color
out-of-doors as they are on the map?”
“Tom Sawyer, what’s a map for? Ain’t it to learn
you facts?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then, how’s it going to do that if it tells lies?
That’s what I want to know.”
“Shucks, you muggins! It don’t tell lies.”
“It don’t, don’t it?”
“No, it don’t.”
“All right, then; if it don’t, there ain’t no two
States the same color. You git around THAT if you
can, Tom Sawyer.”
He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell