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<h2> CHAPTER VIII </h2>
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<p>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 wood-pecker, 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
<i>temporarily</i>!</p>
<p>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 Sunday-school, some drowsy summer
morning, with a blood-curdling 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! <i>now</i> 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!”</p>
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<p>Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he
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 of it
with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He put his
hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:</p>
<p>“What hasn’t come here, come! What’s here, stay here!”</p>
<p>Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up
and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were
of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom’s astonishment was bound-less!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:</p>
<p>“Well, that beats anything!”</p>
<p>Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth
was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his
comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a marble with
certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then
opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find
that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together
there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But now,
this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. Tom’s whole
structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had many a time heard
of this thing succeeding but never of its failing before. It did not occur
to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never
find the hiding-places afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time,
and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm.
He thought he would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around
till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in
it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and
called—</p>
<p>“Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!”</p>
<p>The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.</p>
<p>“He dasn’t tell! So it <i>was</i> a witch that done it. I just
knowed it.”</p>
<p>He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave
up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the
marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient
search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to his
treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing
when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his
pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:</p>
<p>“Brother, go find your brother!”</p>
<p>He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have
fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last repetition
was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each other.</p>
<p>Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a
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, and in a
moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with
fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering
blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way and that. He
said cautiously—to an imaginary company:</p>
<p>“Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow.”</p>
<p>Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom
called:</p>
<p>“Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?”</p>
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<p>“Guy of Guisborne wants no man’s pass. Who art thou that—that—”</p>
<p>“Dares to hold such language,” said Tom, prompting—for
they talked “by the book,” from memory.</p>
<p>“Who art thou that dares to hold such language?”</p>
<p>“I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know.”</p>
<p>“Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I
dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!”</p>
<p>They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, “two up and two down.” Presently Tom said:</p>
<p>“Now, if you’ve got the hang, go it lively!”</p>
<p>So they “went it lively,” panting and perspiring with the
work. By and by Tom shouted:</p>
<p>“Fall! fall! Why don’t you fall?”</p>
<p>“I sha’n’t! Why don’t you fall yourself? You’re
getting the worst of it.”</p>
<p>“Why, that ain’t anything. I can’t fall; that ain’t
the way it is in the book. The book says, ‘Then with one back-handed
stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne.’ You’re to turn around
and let me hit you in the back.”</p>
<p>There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the
whack and fell.</p>
<p>“Now,” said Joe, getting up, “you got to let me kill <i>you</i>.
That’s fair.”</p>
<p>“Why, I can’t do that, it ain’t in the book.”</p>
<p>“Well, it’s blamed mean—that’s all.”</p>
<p>“Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller’s
son, and lam me with a quarter-staff; or I’ll be the Sheriff of
Nottingham and you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me.”</p>
<p>This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then Tom
became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed
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 arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree.” Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle
and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.</p>
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<p>The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. They
said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President
of the United States forever.</p>
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