The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Chapter 18 (2)
No.16 Chapter (2)
"Poor kid, that's what it is. We're sorry for you too, but we—oh, damn it, we don't want smallpox, you know. Listen to me, and I'll tell you what to do. Don't plan to paddle the raft to the shore by yourself, you'll be smashed to pieces. Just keep drifting down like this, about twenty miles or so, and there's a town on the left bank of the river. When you get there, the sun will come out early. Yes. When you ask for help, just say that your family is sick. Don't be so stupid, let people know what's going on. We're doing this for your own good. You have to set aside twenty miles to talk about it. Okay. Boy. It's no good to land where the light is on - it's just a sawmill. Hey, your dad is probably poor and doesn't look like he's lucky. I've got a 20-dollar gold piece, and I'll put it here board, floats up to you, and you put it away. I feel ashamed to leave you, but, my God! Smallpox is no joke, do you understand?"

"Wait, Parker," said the other, "I've got $20 here too, let's put it on the board. Good-bye, little guy, and you'll do what Mr. Parker says, and you'll be right."

"Yeah, boy—bye, bye. If you see runaway niggers, get somebody to catch 'em, and you'll make some money to spend."

"Goodbye, sir," I said, "never let a runaway nigger get past me if I could."

They finally walked away, and I went back to the raft. I felt very uncomfortable, not a good feeling, because I had done something wrong, and I knew it in my heart. It seemed that it was impossible to prevent me from doing wrong things. I can't learn it either.If a person has not learned well since he was a child, he will not be promising when he grows up, and he will be discouraged when it comes to critical moments, and he will not be able to do anything.After thinking about it again, I said to myself again, it's not necessarily true, if I do this right, that is, hand over Jim, can I feel better than now?No, I said, I'd feel bad too, just like now.So what is the use of learning to do things right?If you do things right, you will cause trouble, but if you do things wrong, you will not be troubled, and it is the same to make money.This confuses me, and I really can't answer the question.So I don't think I need to worry about this anymore, and I can do whatever is convenient in the future.

I got into the shed, and Jim wasn't there, and I looked around, and there was no sign of him anywhere.I just called out:
"Jim!
"Where am I, Huck, are they far away? Don't talk too loudly."

He was soaking in the river, hiding under the oars with only his nose sticking out.I told him that those people had disappeared, and he climbed up and said:

"I heard all you just said, and when I got scared I slipped into the water, and if they came up on the raft, I'd swim up to the bank and come back when they were gone. But, oh, you coaxed 'em out It's terrific, Huck! It's terrific! I tell you, boy, you saved old Jim—old Jim never forgot you, sweetie."

Then we talked about the money again.This extra money is really a lot, and each person can get 20 yuan.Jim said we could take steerage on the steamboat now, and with the money in hand, we could go where we wanted in the Free State.He said it would be okay to walk another twenty miles on a raft, but he still wished that we would have reached that place by now.

We docked before dawn, and Jim carefully hid the raft.After another busy day, he packed everything up and tied several bundles. When everything was ready, he waited to leave the raft and go ashore.

About ten o'clock that night we saw the lights of a small town just down the river on the left at a bend in the river.

I'll go there in a small boat first to inquire.After a while, I saw a person sitting in a small boat, setting a row of hooks and fishing lines.I rowed over and asked him:
"Sir, is that place Cairo?"

"Carol? No. You're a fool."

"What town is that, sir?"

"If you want to know, go there and inquire by yourself. Go away, stay here again, and be careful that I will make you eat too much."

I hastened to the raft.Jim was so disappointed that I said it was okay, after this town the next one would probably be Cairo.

We passed another town before daylight, and I thought of going there first; but the place was high, so I dismissed the idea.Jim said there was no high ground near Cairo, how could I have forgotten that just now.We stopped at a sandbar near the left-hand bank and hid for a day.I gradually felt something was wrong.So does Jim.I say:
"Maybe we've passed Kylo, ​​that night when the fog came up."

他 说:

"Better let's not talk about it, Huck. Poor black person's never been lucky. I've been thinking that rattlesnake's skin was the thing."

"If only I hadn't seen that snakeskin at all, Jim, if I hadn't."

"It ain't your fault, Huck; you didn't know it then, come on, don't blame yourself."

After daybreak, we saw the clear and bright water of the Ohio River on the shore. No problem, the yellow muddy water of that big river was still outside!It turned out that Kai Luo had already left behind.

We talked and talked about it.It was impossible to go ashore, and of course it was impossible to row upstream on a raft.No way, I have to wait until it gets dark and try to row a boat up.During the whole day, we slept in the poplar grove so that we could refresh ourselves and do a good job.Unexpectedly, we waited until dark and ran to the raft to have a look, and the boat was gone!
The two of us stood there for a while, neither of us spoke, and indeed we had nothing to say.Both of us knew in our hearts that it was the snake skin that was at work.It's no use talking about it like that, but it looks like we're always complaining, and maybe getting some bad luck out of it again--endless bad luck, you'll have enough of it until you've had enough of the lesson to keep silent.

Then we discussed what to do, but we still couldn't come up with a solution, so we had to float down on a wooden raft, buy a boat when we had a chance, and go back.If we borrow other people's boats when no one is around, we don't intend to use this method that Dad often uses.Because if we do this, we will set ourselves on fire and cause others to chase us.

So as soon as it got dark, we drifted away on a wooden raft again.

That piece of snakeskin made us suffer so much, if anyone still doesn't believe that playing with snakeskin is bad luck, then he will read this book and see how much more we have to suffer for it, and he will naturally believe it .

The place where you can buy a boat is by the river where the rafts are docked.But we didn't see any rafts parked along the way, so we drifted forward for more than three hours.Well, it's so dark at night, you can't see your fingers, it's almost as bad as the fog.You don't know what the river looks like, and you can't see clearly how far or how close it is.In the dead of night, a steamboat sailing upstream suddenly came by.We hastily lit our lanterns, so that we could see them from the steamer.Boats going upstream generally don't go close to us, and always find still water close to the reef and walk along the sandbar.But in this dark night, they only face the big river and go up against the rapids.

We heard it roaring and coming, but we didn't see it until we got close.It was coming right at us, the way these boats like to go, trying to get as close as they could without hitting the raft.Sometimes the big paddle wheel on the steamboat would nibble off an oar from the raft, and the navigator would stick his head out and laugh happily, thinking he was doing a good job.Hey, this time it drove so straight, we said it wanted to "shave" us again.But it doesn't seem to want to get out of the way at all.The steamboat was quite big, coming very fiercely, pressing over like a black cloud, and there seemed to be rows of fireflies around it.But all of a sudden, it sprang clear and clear in front of us, frighteningly big, with a long row of open boiler doors in front of it, flashing like red-hot teeth, and the huge bow and bumper pressed down to us. The head came up.Someone on board shouted at us, and the stop bell jingled, and someone shouted curses, and the whistle sounded—the instant Jim and I jumped into the water on either side of the raft, the steamboat He bumped into it head-on, smashing the raft into pieces.

I held my breath and dived underwater, intending to dive all the way to the bottom of the river, because the three-foot-long paddle wheel on the boat was going to roll over my head, and I had to make room for it.I can usually stay underwater for a minute, but this time I stayed for a full minute and a half.Then I slammed into the water because I was literally suffocating.The head popped out first, and then even the armpits came out of the water, and then I blew the water out of my nose, and spit out a few sips of water from my mouth.Needless to say, the river was flowing fast and furiously. The steamboat stopped for about ten seconds and then started the machine again, booming and going up. It went up, and the sound was still audible, but in a blink of an eye, it slipped away without a trace in the dark night.

I called Jim loudly, and there was no response after calling more than a dozen times. I stepped on the water, grabbed a piece of wood that hit me, and hugged the wood to swim to the shore.At last I found out that the river was going up the left bank, that is to say, I happened to be in a cross current, so I quickly changed direction and swam towards that end.

It was a cross current a good two miles long, so I had a hard time swimming over it, and I managed to get to the bank safely and climb up to the bank.I could only see what was not far in front of me, but I still groped forward for several hundred yards, and then I came to an old house built with double rows of logs.I was about to go around, but suddenly a large group of dogs jumped out and barked at me. I knew it would be bad if I moved at this time, so I had to stand there without moving.

(End of this chapter)