CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM'S PIPE:
BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhoodof the pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into thetunnel, and went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there inthe middle of the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in itwhere they used to keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday-schoolsaid; but he was gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn't take nointerest in the place, because there could be ghosts there, of course;not fresh ones, but I don't like no kind.
So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, andthen went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got toCairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road asever I see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked childreneverywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong andhandsome. And the city was a curiosity. Such narrow streets--why, theywere just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women withveils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sortsof colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by eachother in such narrow little cracks, but they done it--a perfect jam, yousee, and everybody noisy. The stores warn't big enough to turn aroundin, but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion onhis counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where hecould reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, forthe camel-loads brushed him as they went by.
Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed menrunning and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rodthat didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultanriding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took yourbreath away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat andlaid on his stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller helped meto remember. He was one that had a rod and run in front.
There was churches, but they don't know enough to keep Sunday; they keepFriday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when yougo in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groupson the stone floor and making no end of noise--getting their lessonsby heart, Tom said, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, andpeople that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such abig church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made youdizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it;if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box.
What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested indervishes on accounts of the one that played the trick on thecamel-driver. So we found a lot in a kind of a church, and they calledthemselves Whirling Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I neversee anything like it. They had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linenpetticoats; and they spun and spun and spun, round and round like tops,and the petticoats stood out on a slant, and it was the prettiest thingI ever see, and made me drunk to look at it. They was all Moslems, Tomsaid, and when I asked him what a Moslem was, he said it was a personthat wasn't a Presbyterian. So there is plenty of them in Missouri,though I didn't know it before.
We didn't see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such asweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a mosttiresome time to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grainbefore the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to lookat, being such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and mademore fuss over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. Howhe ever found that place was too many for me. We passed as much as fortyjust like it before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done forme, but none but just the right one would suit him; I never see anybodyso particular as Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one hereconnized it as easy as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one,but how he done it he couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he saidso himself.
Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived thatlearned the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones,and said it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jimabout it when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was readyto drop, and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and gitsomebody that knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could gostraight to the place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothingelse would answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablestthing happened I ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of yearsago--every last rag of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a personwouldn't ever believe that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't everbeen in that town before could go and hunt that place over and find thatbrick, but Tom Sawyer done it. I know he done it, because I see him doit. I was right by his very side at the time, and see him see the brickand see him reconnize it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Isit knowledge, or is it instink?
Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain ittheir own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinionthat some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. Thereason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum withhis name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out andput another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn'tknow the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think thatsettles it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him wherethe exact PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it bythe place it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge,not instink, he would know the brick again by the look of it the nexttime he seen it--which he didn't. So it shows that for all the bragyou hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worthforty of it for real unerringness. Jim says the same.
When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a youngman there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacketand baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it thatcould talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us toMecca and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollara day and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power,and by the time we was through dinner we was over the place where theIsraelites crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them andwas caught by the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at theplace, and it done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all,now, just the way it happened; he could see the Israelites walking alongbetween the walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away offyonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the Israeliteswent out, and then when they was all in, see the walls tumble togetherand drown the last man of them. Then we piled on the power again andrushed away and huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Mosesbroke the tables of stone, and where the children of Israel campedin the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just asinteresting as could be, and the guide knowed every place as well as Iknowed the village at home.
But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to astandstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelledand warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstandingthe strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom hedidn't know WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn'tanything but a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knowsit lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and youcan't git him to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn'tpersuade him. So there he was.
He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we couldroust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tomwas pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd gotthe idea and knowed what to do. He says:
"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearlynew. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove athome in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and meand Huck will camp here on Mount Sina
i till you come back."
"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village,nur Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."
That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:
"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set yourcompass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the UnitedStates. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strikethe other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it,bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the Floridacoast, and in an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of theMississippi--at the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so highup in the air that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter likea washbowl turned upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawlingaround every which way, long before you get there, and you can pick outthe Mississippi without any trouble. Then you can follow the river northnearly, an hour and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; thenyou want to look sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to yourleft you'll see another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is alittle above St. Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examinethe villages as you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in thenext fifteen minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and ifyou don't, you can yell down and ask."
"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows wekin."
The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to standhis watch in a little while.
"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "Thisballoon's as easy to manage as a canoe."
Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, andsays:
"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seventhousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice asfar." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-taleall through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred milesan hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-currentthat's going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thingwithout any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found,any time you want to hunt for them."
"We'll hunt for them, sir."
"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, andit'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a gooddeal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket foryou! You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in theselatitudes; and they travel low, too."
Then he ciphered on the time, and says--
"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make thetrip in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back hereSaturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food andbooks and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. Thereain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker youfetch that pipe the better."
All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was outand the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, andTom gave his last orders:
"It's 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you'll behome, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strikethe village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods,out of sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in thepost-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down overyour face so they won't know you. Then you go and slip in the back wayto the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on thekitchen table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide outand git away, and don't let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobodyelse. Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai threehundred miles an hour. You won't have lost more than an hour. You'llstart back at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours,arriving at 2 or 3 P.M., Mount Sinai time."
Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it:
"THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro-nort sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." *
[* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck's error, not Tom's.--M.T.]
"That'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. Then hesays:
"Stand by! One--two--three--away you go!"
And away she DID go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second.
Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole bigplain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe.
The balloon come back all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly hadcatched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened:she sent for Tom. So Jim he says:
"Mars Tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' foryou, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold ofyou. Dey's gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, 'deed dey is."
So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither.
END.
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