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Mark Twain > Tom Sawyer Abroad > Chapter XI

Tom Sawyer Abroad

Chapter XI


THE SAND-STORM

WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then
just as the full moon was touching the ground
on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little
black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the
moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooled
down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have
company, though it warn't going our way. It was a
rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at
next morning when the sun come a-streaming across
the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels
on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-
legses marching in procession. We never went very
near it, because we knowed better now than to act like
that and scare people's camels and break up their cara-
vans. It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich
clothes and nobby style. Some of the chiefs rode on
dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and
they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and
they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and
churn up his dinner considerable, I bet you, but they
make noble good time, and a camel ain't nowheres with
them for speed.

The caravan camped, during the middle part of the
day, and then started again about the middle of the
afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look very
curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to
copper, and after that it begun to look like a blood-
red ball, and the air got hot and close, and pretty soon
all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick
and foggy, but fiery and dreadful -- like it looks
through a piece of red glass, you know. We looked
down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan,
and a rushing every which way like they was scared;
and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and
laid there perfectly still.

Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up
like an amazing wide wall, and reached from the Desert
up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was coming
like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck
us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun
to sift against our faces and sting like fire, and Tom
sung out:

"It's a sand-storm -- turn your backs to it!"

We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a
gale, and the sand beat against us by the shovelful, and
the air was so thick with it we couldn't see a thing. In
five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting
on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only
our heads out and could hardly breathe.

Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous
wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at,
I tell you. We dug ourselves out and looked down,
and where the caravan was before there wasn't any-
thing but just the sand ocean now, and all still and
quiet. All them people and camels was smothered and
dead and buried -- buried under ten foot of sand, we
reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before
the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends
wouldn't ever know what become of that caravan.
Tom said:

"NOW we know what it was that happened to the
people we got the swords and pistols from."

Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day
now. They got buried in a sand-storm, and the wild
animals couldn't get at them, and the wind never un-
covered them again until they was dried to leather and
warn't fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry
for them poor people as a person could for anybody,
and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this last
caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal
harder. You see, the others was total strangers, and
we never got to feeling acquainted with them at all,
except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching
the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We
was huvvering around them a whole night and 'most a
whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly with
them, and acquainted. I have found out that there
ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people
or hate them than to travel with them. Just so with
these. We kind of liked them from the start, and
traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer
we traveled with them, and the more we got used to
their ways, the better and better we liked them, and
the gladder and gladder we was that we run across
them. We had come to know some of them so well
that we called them by name when we was talking
about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that
we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used
their plain names without any handle, and it did not
seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it
wasn't their own names, but names we give them.
There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline
Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and
young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly
that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and
dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But
as soon as we come to know them good, and like them
very much, it warn't Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing,
any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and
Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.

And you know the more you join in with people in
their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and
dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn't cold
and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right
down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in every-
thing that was going, and the caravan could depend on
us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no differ-
ence what it was.

When they camped, we camped right over them, ten
or twelve hundred feet up in the air. When they et a
meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much home-
liker to have their company. When they had a wed-
ding that night, and Buck and Addy got married, we
got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor's
duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined
in and shook a foot up there.

But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the
nearest, and it was a funeral that done it with us. It
was next morning, just in the still dawn. We didn't
know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that
never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan,
and that was enough, and there warn't no more sincerer
tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on him
from up there eleven hundred foot on high.

Yes, parting with this caravan was much more
bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was
comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway.
We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of
them, too, and now to have death snatch them from
right before our faces while we was looking, and leave
us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big
desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever
make any more friends on that voyage if we was
going to lose them again like that.

We couldn't keep from talking about them, and
they was all the time coming up in our memory, and
looking just the way they looked when we was all alive
and happy together. We could see the line marching,
and the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we
could see the dromedaries lumbering along; we could
see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener
than anything else we could see them praying, because
they don't allow nothing to prevent that; whenever
the call come, several times a day, they would stop
right there, and stand up and face to the east, and lift
back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin,
and four or five times they would go down on their
knees, and then fall forward and touch their forehead
to the ground.

Well, it warn't good to go on talking about them,
lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their
life and death both, because it didn't do no good, and
made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going
to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them
again in a better world; and Tom kept still and didn't
tell him they was only Mohammedans; it warn't no
use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just
as it was.

When we woke up next morning we was feeling a
little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good
sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is,
and I don't see why people that can afford it don't
have it more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I
never see the balloon so steady before.

Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered
what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it
didn't seem good sense to throw it away. Jim says:

"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it?
How long'll it take?"

"Depends on the way we go."

"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load
at home, en I reckon we's got as much as twenty
loads, hain't we? How much would dat be?"

"Five dollars."

"By jings, Mars Tom, le's shove for home right on
de spot! Hit's more'n a dollar en a half apiece, hain't
it?"

"Yes."

"Well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever I
struck! She jes' rained in -- never cos' us a lick o'
work. Le's mosey right along, Mars Tom."

But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy
and excited he never heard him. Pretty soon he says:

"Five dollars -- sho! Look here, this sand's worth
-- worth -- why, it's worth no end of money."

"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"

"Well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand
from the genuwyne Desert of Sahara, they'll just be in
a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to
keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a
curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and
float around all over the United States and peddle them
out at ten cents apiece. We've got all of ten thousand
dollars' worth of sand in this boat."

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun
to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:

"And we can keep on coming back and fetching
sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and
just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole Desert
over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going
to be any opposition, either, because we'll take out a
patent."

"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creo-
sote, won't we, Tom?"

"Yes -- Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was
hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth,
and didn't know he was walking over the real ones for
a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the
driver."

"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"

"Well, I don't know yet. It's got to be ciphered,
and it ain't the easiest job to do, either, because it's
over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a
vial."

Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out consider-
able, and he shook his head and says:

"Mars Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials -- a king
couldn't. We better not try to take de whole Desert,
Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'."

Tom's excitement died out, too, now, and I reck-
oned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn't. He
set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last
he says:

"Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up."

"Why, Tom?"

"On account of the duties."

I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could
Jim. I says:

"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git
around it, why can't we just DO it? People often has
to."

But he says:

"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean
is a tax. Whenever you strike a frontier -- that's the
border of a country, you know -- you find a custom-
house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rum-
mages among your things and charges a big tax, which
they call a duty because it's their duty to bust you if
they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll hog
your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't
deceive nobody, it's just hogging, and that's all it is.
Now if we try to carry this sand home the way we're
pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git tired --
just frontier after frontier -- Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan,
and so on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you
see, easy enough, we CAN'T go THAT road."

"Why, Tom," I says, "we can sail right over their
old frontiers; how are THEY going to stop us?"

He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:

"Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?"

I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said
nothing, and he went on:

"Well, we're shut off the other way, too. If we go
back the way we've come, there's the New York
custom-house, and that is worse than all of them others
put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've
got."

"Why?"

"Well, they can't raise Sahara sand in America, of
course, and when they can't raise a thing there, the
duty is fourteen hundred thousand per cent. on it if
you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it."

"There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."

"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me
like that for, Huck Finn? You wait till I say a thing's
got sense in it before you go to accusing me of say-
ing it."

"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry.
Go on."

Jim says:

"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything
we can't raise in America, en don't make no 'stinction
'twix' anything?"

"Yes, that's what they do."

"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos'
valuable thing dey is?"

"Yes, it is."

"Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it
down on de people?"

"Yes."

"Whah do it come from?"

"From heaven."

"Yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey -- it
come from heaven, en dat's a foreign country. NOW,
den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?"

"No, they don't."

"Course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat
you's mistaken, Mars Tom. Dey wouldn't put de tax
on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't 'bleeged to
have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which
nobody can't git along widout."

Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him
where he couldn't budge. He tried to wiggle out by
saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but they'd
be sure to remember about it, next session of Con-
gress, and then they'd put it on, but that was a poor
lame come-off, and he knowed it. He said there
warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that
one, and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing
it, and to be consistent was the first law of politics.
So he stuck to it that they'd left it out unintentional
and would be certain to do their best to fix it before
they got caught and laughed at.

But I didn't feel no more interest in such things, as
long as we couldn't git our sand through, and it made
me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom he tried to
cheer us up by saying he would think up another
speculation for us that would be just as good as this
one and better, but it didn't do no good, we didn't
believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty
hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could
'a' bought a country and started a kingdom and been
celebrated and happy, and now we was so poor and
ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands.
The sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold
and di'monds, and the feel of it was so soft and so
silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear the sight of it,
it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't
ever feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I
didn't have it there no more to remind us of what we
had been and what we had got degraded down to.
The others was feeling the same way about it that I
was. I knowed it, because they cheered up so, the
minute I says le's throw this truck overboard.

Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty
solid work, too; so Tom he divided it up according to
fairness and strength. He said me and him would
clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-
fifths. Jim he didn't quite like that arrangement. He
says:

"Course I's de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share
accordin', but by jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole
Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?"

"Well, I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand
at fixing it, and let's see."

So Jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if
me and Tom done a TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his
back to git room and be private, and then he smole a
smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara
to the westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where
we come from. Then he turned around again and
said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was
satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.

So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the
bow and left the rest for Jim, and it surprised Jim a
good deal to see how much difference there was and
what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said
he was powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time
and got the first arrangement altered, for he said that
even the way it was now, there was more sand than
enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.

Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and
tough; so hot we had to move up into cooler weather
or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom took turn
about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there
warn't nobody to spell poor old Jim, and he made all
that part of Africa damp, he sweated so. We couldn't
work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he kept
fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and
we had to keep making up things to account for it, and
they was pretty poor inventions, but they done well
enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when
we got done we was 'most dead, but not with work
but with laughing. By and by Jim was 'most dead,
too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and
spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be,
and would set on the gunnel and swab the sweat, and
heave and pant, and say how good we was to a poor
old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. He was
always the gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little
thing you done for him. He was only nigger outside;
inside he was as white as you be.

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