Tom Sawyer Abroad: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

IT'S A CARAVAN

I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I
made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a
body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give
the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.

We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was
breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight
again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and
says:

"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great
Sahara, as sure as guns!"

He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:

"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?"

"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."

Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of
interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't
more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far
away for us to have traveled.

But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions
and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found
out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if
he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:

"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea
voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping
St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the
afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this
Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about
seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went
down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half
past 11 A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and
set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast;
but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of
setting by the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out--more than four
hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the
longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted
right--which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering--wandering 'way
down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this
map. You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how
fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past
England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up,
and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is
coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa;
and it's just bully."

Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:

"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's, hain't seen no niggers
yit."

"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off
yonder? Gimme a glass."

He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across
the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.

"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and--"

"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"

"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well,
and here they are, and you can see for yourself."

"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the
GROUND."

"Tom, do you know that to be so?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."

He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument,
if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac
and sing out:

"Camels!--Camels!"

So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:

"Camels your granny; they're spiders."

"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in
the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away?
Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go
down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a
caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long."

"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."

"All right," he says, and give the command:

"Lower away."

As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and
a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels
and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weather--well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of
a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.

The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs,
some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered
every which way, and so did the camels.

We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to
get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but
we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the
other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the
mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be
watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got
nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and
horses--for that is what they was--and we see them mount in a hurry; and
next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with
long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could.

They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a'
been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then
they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and
scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like
everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead
and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and
camels racing off in every direction.

At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went
staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him,
for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.

We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head
bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance,
and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half
a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child,
which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her
before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides,
we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while,
anyway, with the wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We
swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up
the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor,
too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a
horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and
tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he
was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she
heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for
the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and
then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged
him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all
the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we
was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her
head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her
neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in
the sky.

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