Adventure stories; Americans -- Foreign countries -- Fiction; Balloon ascensions -- Fiction; Sawyer, Tom (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young
man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket
and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that
could talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to
Mecca and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar
a day and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power,
and by the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the
Israelites crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and
was caught by the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at the
place, and it done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all,
now, just the way it happened; he could see the Israelites walking
along between the walls of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away
off yonder, hurrying all they could, and see them start in as the
Israelites went out, and then when they was all in, see the walls
tumble together and drown the last man of them. Then we piled on the
power again and rushed away and huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the
place where Moses broke the tables of stone, and where the children of
Israel camped in the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was
all just as interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every place
as well as I knowed the village at home.
But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a
standstill. Tom’s old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled
and warped that she couldn’t hold together any longer, notwithstanding
the strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he
didn’t know _what_ to do. The professor’s pipe wouldn’t answer; it
warn’t anything but a mershum, and a person that’s got used to a cob
pipe knows it lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world,
and you can’t git him to smoke any other. He wouldn’t take mine, I
couldn’t persuade him. So there he was.
He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could
roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,
but the guide said no, it warn’t no use, they didn’t have them. So Tom
was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he’d
got the idea and knowed what to do. He says:
“I’ve got another corn-cob pipe, and it’s a prime one, too, and nearly
new. It’s laying on the rafter that’s right over the kitchen stove at
home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me
and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back.”
“But, Mars Tom, we couldn’t ever find de village. I could find de pipe,
’case I knows de kitchen, but my lan’, we can’t ever find de village,
nur Sent Louis, nur none o’ dem places. We don’t know de way, Mars
Tom.”
That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account