CHAPTER VIII
TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of thetrack of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crosseda small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenilesuperstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour laterhe was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of CardiffHill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in thevalley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way tothe 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 evenstilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was brokenby no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a wood-pecker, andthis seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness themore profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelingswere in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbowson his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to himthat life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied JimmyHodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lieand slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering throughthe trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, andnothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more. If he only had aclean Sunday-school record he could be willing to go, and be done withit all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meantthe best in the world, and been treated like a dog--like a very dog. Shewould be sorry some day--maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could onlydie _temporarily_!
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrainedshape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back intothe concerns of this life again. What if he turned his back, now, anddisappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever so far away, intounknown countries beyond the seas--and never came back any more! Howwould she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, onlyto fill him with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tightswere an offense, when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that wasexalted into the vague august realm of the romantic. No, he would bea soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and illustrious.No--better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go onthe warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of theFar West, and away in the future come back a great chief, bristling withfeathers, hideous with paint, and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsysummer morning, with a blood-curdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballsof all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no, there wassomething gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it!_now_ his future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginablesplendor. 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 flyingat the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appearat the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, inhis black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimsonsash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlassat his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled,with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasythe whisperings, "It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of theSpanish Main!"
Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away fromhome and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Thereforehe must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources together.He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end ofit with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. Heput his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:
"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"
Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took itup and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sideswere of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was bound-less!He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:
"Well, that beats anything!"
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. Thetruth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he andall his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you burieda marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone afortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had justused, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gatheredthemselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had beenseparated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He hadmany a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failingbefore. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several timesbefore, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterward. Hepuzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witchhad interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himselfon that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spotwith a little funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down andput his mouth close to this depression and called--
"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!"
The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for asecond and then darted under again in a fright.
"He dasn't tell! So it _was_ a witch that done it. I just knowed it."
He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so hegave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well havethe marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made apatient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to histreasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standingwhen he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from hispocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:
"Brother, go find your brother!"
He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it musthave fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The lastrepetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of eachother.
Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the greenaisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turneda suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, andin a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged,with fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew ananswering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this wayand that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:
"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."
Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.Tom called:
"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?"
"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--"
"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting--for they talked "bythe book," from memory.
"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"
"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."
"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I disputewith thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"
They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, carefulcombat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said:
"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"
So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By andby Tom shouted:
"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"
"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst ofit."
"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in thebook. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guyof Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the back."
There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, receive
d thewhack and fell.
"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill _you_. That'sfair."
"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."
"Well, it's blamed mean--that's all."
"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lamme with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you beRobin Hood a little while and kill me."
This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. ThenTom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun tobleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrowfalls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then heshot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettleand sprang up too gaily for a corpse.
The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went offgrieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what moderncivilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest thanPresident of the United States forever.