Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

40. CHAPTER XL. (continued)

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!"

But me and Jim was consulting -­ and thinking. And after we'd thought a minute, I says:

"Say it, Jim."

So he says:

"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat `uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on en save me, nemmine `bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn't! WELL, den, is JIM gywne to say it? No, sah -­ I doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout a DOCTOR, not if it's forty year!"

I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say -­ so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good.