right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I says:
“ Now , old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave no more.”
“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ’uz planned beautiful, en it ’uz done beautiful; en dey ain’t nobody kin git up a plan dat’s mo’ mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”
We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.
When me and Jim heard that we didn’t feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to bandage him, but he says:
“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!—’deed we did. I wish we’d a had the handling of Louis XVI , there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in his biography; no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the border —that’s what we’d a done with him —and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps—man the sweeps!”