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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
Chapter VIII
TOM
dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track
of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small
"branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile
superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he
was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill,
and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley
behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre
of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not
even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs
of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the
occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render
the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy's
soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his
surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his
hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best,
and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be
very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever,
with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the
flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any
more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to
go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done?
Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog
-- like a very dog. She would be sorry some day -- maybe when it was too
late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!
But
the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape
long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the
concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, and
disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away -- ever so far away, into
unknown countries beyond the seas -- and never came back any more! How
would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only
to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights were
an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted
into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would be a soldier,
and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious. No -- better
still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath
in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and
away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers,
hideous with paint, and prance into Sundayschool, some drowsy summer
morning, with a bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his
companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier
even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay
plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name
would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go
plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit
of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at the zenith
of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk
into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and
trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with
horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with
waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and crossbones on
it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, "It's Tom Sawyer
the Pirate! -- the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!" |
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