The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful story, filled with high adventure and unforgettable characters. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River.
Huck Finn escapes from his alcoholic father by faking his own death and so begins his journey through the Deep South, seeking independence and freedom. On his travels, Huck meets an escaped slave, Jim, who is a wanted man, and together they journey down the Mississippi River. Raising the timeless and universal issues of prejudice, bravery and hope, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was and still is considered the great American novel.

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Florida, Missouri, Mark Twain was raised in the bustling river town of Hannibal. The mighty Mississippi River deeply shaped his youth and imagination. After his father's death, he left school at twelve to work as a printer's apprentice, igniting his lifelong connection to publishing. He later fulfilled a childhood dream by becoming a Mississippi steamboat pilot, a profession that provided his famous pen name—a river term indicating a safe depth of two fathoms.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 halted commercial river traffic, prompting Twain to travel west to Nevada in search of silver. When mining proved unsuccessful, he pivoted to journalism. Working as a reporter in Virginia City and San Francisco, he honed his distinctive literary voice: a blend of biting satire, irreverent humor, and keen social observation. In 1865, his humorous short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" became a massive success, catapulting him to national fame.

Settling in Hartford, Connecticut, Twain entered his most prolific creative period. Drawing heavily upon his idyllic boyhood memories, he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876. He followed this with his undisputed masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in 1884. Often celebrated as the Great American Novel, the book revolutionized the country's literature through its pioneering use of colloquial speech and its profound, uncompromising indictment of institutionalized slavery and Southern hypocrisy.

Despite achieving unprecedented international acclaim, Twain's final decades were marred by severe financial instability from failed entrepreneurial investments and profound personal grief, including the deaths of his wife and three of his four children. Consequently, his later writings adopted a noticeably darker, more cynical tone that reflected his growing disillusionment with human nature. He passed away in 1910 at the age of seventy-four, leaving behind an enduring legacy as America's premier humorist and a towering architect of modern American literature.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is one of the most important and widely discussed novels in American literature. First published in 1884–1885, the novel follows Huckleberry Finn, a poor, independent-minded boy who escapes his abusive father and travels down the Mississippi River with Jim, an enslaved man who is running away in search of freedom. Although the story is filled with adventure, humor, deception, danger, and memorable characters, its deeper subject is the development of Huck’s moral understanding. Through his journey, Huck gradually learns to question the values taught by the society around him, particularly the assumptions surrounding slavery, race, religion, respectability, and “civilization.” Project Gutenberg classifies the novel among adventure stories, Bildungsromans, humorous fiction, stories about boys and friendship, and works concerning race relations, fugitive slaves, and the Mississippi River.

The novel is narrated by Huck himself, and this first-person perspective is one of Mark Twain’s greatest achievements. Huck speaks in the language and dialect of the world in which he has grown up rather than in polished literary English. Twain deliberately uses several regional dialects to make the voices of his characters sound authentic. Because Huck is young, poorly educated, and unfamiliar with formal social conventions, he often describes complicated events in remarkably simple language. This creates much of the novel’s humor, but it also allows Twain to expose the contradictions of society through the eyes of someone who does not always understand why adults believe the things they believe.

At the beginning of the novel, Huck is living with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, who are trying to “civilize” him. They want him to wear respectable clothes, attend school, behave properly, and accept religious and social rules. Huck does not enjoy this life. He prefers freedom, nature, adventure, and the company of his friend Tom Sawyer. Huck’s discomfort with civilization becomes an important theme throughout the story. He is not naturally rebellious simply for the sake of rebellion; rather, he feels that many of society’s rules are artificial and restrictive. The novel begins with this tension between individual freedom and social expectations.

Huck’s situation becomes more dangerous when his father, Pap, returns. Pap is an abusive, alcoholic man who resents Huck’s education and financial independence. He kidnaps Huck and takes him to a remote cabin, where he keeps him imprisoned. Huck realizes that staying with Pap could eventually destroy him, so he carefully plans an escape. He stages his own death by making it appear that someone has murdered him and then disappears. This escape is one of the first major moments in Huck’s development because he takes control of his own fate instead of waiting for adults to rescue him.

After escaping, Huck hides on Jackson’s Island in the Mississippi River. There he unexpectedly discovers Jim, Miss Watson’s enslaved man, who has also run away. Jim explains that he fled after learning that Miss Watson planned to sell him farther south, where he feared he would be separated permanently from his family. Huck and Jim are now both fugitives, but their situations are profoundly different. Huck is escaping an abusive father and a society he dislikes; Jim is escaping a system that legally treats him as property. Their meeting establishes the central relationship of the novel.

At first, Huck is troubled by the fact that he is helping a runaway slave. The society in which he has been raised has taught him that helping Jim escape is morally wrong. Huck has been taught that slavery is legal and that a person who helps a slave escape is committing a serious offense. Yet his personal relationship with Jim gradually becomes more important to him than the rules he has inherited. Huck sees Jim as a human being, a companion, and eventually a close friend. The great moral conflict of the novel emerges from this contradiction between social morality and personal conscience.

The Mississippi River becomes the physical and symbolic center of the story. Huck and Jim travel by raft, hoping eventually to reach a place where Jim can be free. The river provides them with moments of peace and beauty, but it is also dangerous and unpredictable. On the raft, away from towns and institutions, they experience a temporary freedom from the social structures that control them on land. Their relationship develops naturally because they have to depend on one another. The river becomes almost a separate world in which the usual rules of society are suspended.

One of the most important aspects of Huck and Jim’s friendship is the gradual change in Huck’s perception of Jim. At first Huck sometimes treats Jim as an object of amusement and deliberately plays tricks on him. Yet Jim repeatedly demonstrates intelligence, loyalty, affection, courage, and emotional depth. Huck eventually recognizes that Jim is not fundamentally different from himself. Jim worries about his family, fears losing the people he loves, remembers his children, and dreams of freedom. Through these experiences, Huck’s inherited assumptions about race begin to collapse.

The journey is interrupted by a series of encounters that expose the dishonesty and cruelty of the wider society. Huck and Jim meet two traveling con men known as the Duke and the King. These men falsely claim noble identities and use deception to exploit ordinary people. They perform fraudulent schemes, manipulate emotions, and take advantage of communities wherever they go. Their behavior becomes another example of the hypocrisy Twain sees in respectable society. People who claim authority and social status are not necessarily moral, while those whom society labels as criminals or outsiders may possess greater humanity.

The Duke and the King eventually involve Huck and Jim in increasingly dangerous schemes. Their performances lead to the famous episode involving the Wilks family, in which the two con men pretend to be the brothers of a recently deceased man in order to steal his inheritance. Huck becomes uncomfortable with their cruelty and decides to help Mary Jane Wilks discover the truth. This episode demonstrates that Huck’s moral instincts are developing. He still does not possess a complete philosophical understanding of justice, but he increasingly recognizes when someone is being exploited.

Another memorable section involves the Grangerford and Shepherdson families, two wealthy families locked in a generations-long feud. Huck is welcomed by the Grangerfords and initially admires their manners, possessions, and apparent respectability. Yet he gradually discovers that they are involved in a violent cycle of revenge with the Shepherdsons. Members of both families attend church while carrying weapons, and the feud continues despite the fact that neither side can remember its original cause clearly. Twain uses this episode to expose the absurdity of social traditions that are accepted simply because they have existed for a long time.

The Grangerford episode becomes tragic when several family members are killed. Huck witnesses the consequences of hatred disguised as honor. This experience reinforces one of the novel’s central lessons: civilized appearance does not guarantee civilized behavior. People may speak politely, attend church, wear fine clothes, and follow social customs while committing terrible acts. Twain repeatedly turns this contradiction into satire, asking readers to consider whether society’s definition of respectability has anything to do with genuine morality.

Huck’s moral struggle becomes especially intense when he and Jim approach Cairo, where Jim hopes to escape into free territory. Huck knows that helping Jim escape violates everything he has been taught about slavery. He becomes convinced that he has done something morally wrong and even decides to write a letter informing Miss Watson where Jim is. However, when he thinks about Jim’s friendship and remembers the experiences they have shared, he cannot send the letter. He tears it up and chooses Jim instead. This is the decisive moral moment of Huck’s journey.

Huck’s decision is significant because he believes he is doing something wrong according to the moral standards of his society. He has been taught that helping Jim escape will send him to hell. Yet Huck chooses to accept that supposed punishment rather than betray his friend. In one of the novel’s most powerful ironies, Huck believes he is making a morally bad choice while the reader recognizes that he is making the morally right one. Twain uses this reversal to challenge the legitimacy of a society that defines slavery as lawful and compassion as sinful.

The journey continues through further deception and violence. Eventually the Duke and King sell Jim to the Phelps family, claiming that he is a runaway slave. Huck is devastated because Jim has become more than a traveling companion; he has become a member of Huck’s chosen family. Huck decides that he must rescue him. His decision demonstrates how far he has traveled morally. At the beginning of the novel, Huck was uncertain whether helping Jim was wrong. By this stage, he no longer seriously questions whether Jim deserves freedom.

The final section introduces Tom Sawyer, who arrives and becomes involved in the rescue plan. Tom knows that Jim is already legally free because Miss Watson has died and her will has freed him, but he does not tell Huck or the others. Instead, Tom turns the rescue into an elaborate adventure filled with unnecessary complications, secret messages, tunnels, ropes, and invented dangers. The contrast between Huck’s practical approach and Tom’s romantic imagination is both comic and revealing. Huck wants to get Jim out safely; Tom wants to create an exciting story.

The ending has therefore been one of the most debated parts of the novel. Jim suffers unnecessary risks because Tom insists on treating the escape as an adventure rather than a straightforward rescue. Nevertheless, Jim demonstrates remarkable patience, generosity, and concern for others. When Tom is wounded during the escape, Jim refuses to leave him behind even though doing so could jeopardize Jim’s own freedom. Jim’s compassion ultimately exposes the moral limitations of the supposedly “civilized” people around him.

Tom finally reveals that Jim has actually been free since Miss Watson’s death. The complicated escape was therefore unnecessary from a practical standpoint. Miss Watson had freed Jim in her will after regretting her earlier decision to sell him. Tom also brings news that Huck’s father has died, meaning Huck is finally free from the threat of Pap. Jim’s freedom and Huck’s freedom thus become connected. Both characters have escaped forms of captivity, although Jim’s experience has been far more dangerous and brutal.

Huck’s development is the heart of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At the beginning, he accepts many of society’s assumptions without examining them. He thinks slavery is wrong only in the sense that he is breaking the law by helping Jim. Gradually, however, personal experience teaches him that the social rules he has been given are not necessarily moral. Jim’s humanity becomes undeniable, and Huck begins to trust his own conscience. His moral education occurs not in school or church but through friendship, suffering, observation, and personal responsibility.

The theme of freedom runs through the entire novel. Huck wants freedom from civilization, Pap, and social expectations, while Jim wants freedom from slavery and the possibility of being separated from his family. The Mississippi River represents a temporary space where both can experience independence. Yet Twain makes it clear that freedom is fragile. The river can carry Huck and Jim toward safety, but the institutions and people on shore continually threaten them. Freedom is therefore not simply a physical destination; it is a moral and psychological condition.

Race and slavery are at the center of the novel’s historical and moral complexity. Twain wrote about a society in which slavery had been deeply embedded in law, economics, religion, and everyday life. The novel exposes the contradiction between claims of Christian civilization and the treatment of Black people as property. Jim is one of the novel’s most sympathetic figures, particularly in his devotion to his family and his concern for Huck. At the same time, modern readers and scholars have rightly debated the novel’s racial language, stereotypes, and comic treatment of Jim. The work can therefore be both a powerful critique of racism and a text whose representation of race requires careful, critical reading.

Another major theme is the meaning of civilization. Twain repeatedly asks whether the people who consider themselves civilized actually behave more morally than those they judge as uncivilized. Huck is considered a troublesome boy because he refuses to conform, while supposedly respectable adults lie, exploit others, participate in violence, and defend slavery. Jim, meanwhile, is legally treated as property but repeatedly acts with kindness and courage. Twain turns conventional definitions upside down. The novel suggests that genuine civilization should be measured by compassion and moral courage rather than manners, wealth, education, or social position.

The novel is also a coming-of-age story, or Bildungsroman, because Huck’s journey changes the way he understands himself and the world. His growth is not smooth or complete. He continues to make mistakes, misunderstand situations, and imitate the behavior of people around him. Yet his experience with Jim permanently changes his moral perspective. He learns that conscience can conflict with social rules and that doing the right thing may require rejecting what everyone else considers respectable.

Ultimately, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is much more than an adventure story about a boy traveling down the Mississippi River. It is a powerful exploration of friendship, freedom, conscience, race, hypocrisy, identity, and moral growth. Mark Twain uses Huck’s innocent voice to reveal the contradictions of American society and to show how difficult it can be for an individual to recognize injustice when that injustice has been presented as normal. The river provides the setting for adventure, but the real journey is Huck’s movement from inherited prejudice toward personal moral awareness.

For readers searching for a The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn summary, analysis, themes, characters, or explanation, the central message is found in Huck’s relationship with Jim. Huck begins the novel believing that society knows what is right. By the end, he has learned that society itself can be deeply wrong. His friendship with Jim teaches him to value a human being above a social rule, even when he does not have the language or intellectual framework to explain exactly why. That is what makes Huck’s journey so enduring. Twain presents moral growth not as the memorization of rules but as the difficult process of seeing another person fully, questioning inherited beliefs, and finding the courage to act according to one’s conscience. The novel remains a landmark of American literature because its questions about freedom, prejudice, social conformity, and individual morality continue to challenge readers long after Huck and Jim disappear around the bend of the Mississippi River.

Chapter 1

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them,—that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, “Don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry;” and “Don’t scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;” and pretty soon she would say, “Don’t gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don’t you try to behave?” Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn’t say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn’t do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn’t think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By-and-by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.

I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn’t know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom—boom—boom—twelve licks; and all still again—stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees—something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a “me-yow! me-yow!” down there. That was good! Says I, “me-yow! me-yow!” as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

Chapter 2

We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:

“Who dah?”

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

“Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin.”

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn’t know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn’t stand it more’n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn’t want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn’t a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:

“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.”

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you going to do ’bout him?”

“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.

“Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain’t been seen in these parts for a year or more.”

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:

“Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.”

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.

“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of business of this Gang?”

“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.

“But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—”

“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; it’s burglary,” says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it’s considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.”

“Ransomed? What’s that?”

“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so of course that’s what we’ve got to do.”

“But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”

“Why, blame it all, we’ve got to do it. Don’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all muddled up?”

“Oh, that’s all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them?—that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?”

“Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them till they’re dead.”

“Now, that’s something like. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they’ll be, too—eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.”

“How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard! Well, that is good. So somebody’s got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?”

“Because it ain’t in the books so—that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don’t you?—that’s the idea. Don’t you reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn ’em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more.”

“Well, if that’s the way I’m agreed, but I don’t take no stock in it. Mighty soon we’ll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say.”

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn’t want to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.

Chapter 3

Well, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave a while if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn’t make it work. By-and-by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.