Huck/Jim Encounter 11 - Chapter 18

After the collision between the raft and the riverboat, Jim and Huck are separated, and don't reunite until well into the Grangerford-Shepardson story.
Also, Hearn notes that there was a long break between chapter 16 and 17, and the story has shifted from a river adventure with Jim to a series of stories about those who live in the towns along the river.

Huck/Jim Encounter 10 - Chapter 16

The reader can't help but notice the contrast between the beginning of this chapter which opens with Huck observing that they slept most of the day, and as they started out at night noticed a long raft:

WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.  She had four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty men, likely.  She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end.  There was a power of style about her.

Wait.
You just had a powerful encounter with Jim. You learned something about his humanity and the limits of what is acceptable for childhood pranks when you are traveling with someone who considers you a friend, and trusts you with their life, or at least, freedom.
And all you can do is to make like nothing happened?
(Of course we don't know what happened in the 'humbling' conversation that Huck mentions to the reader in the prior chapter; perhaps that conversation was enough to repair the damage and Jim and Huck have a renewed relationship.)

They begin to worry that they might have missed Cairo, the entrance to the Ohio river. Jim expresses to Huck that if they miss it, he'd be in slave country again and  lose his opportunity for freedom.

Here is another major wresting match between heart and conscience, the conscience that has been developed by the rules and attitudes of society. Now the two Providences are arguing inside of him:

Jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom.  Well, I can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, because I begun to get it through my head that he was most free—and who was to blame for it?  Why, me.  I couldn’t get that out of my conscience, no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn’t rest; I couldn’t stay still in one place.  It hadn’t ever come home to me before, what this thing was that I was doing.  But now it did; and it stayed with me, and scorched me more and more.  I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner; but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.”  That was so—I couldn’t get around that noway.  That was where it pinched.  Conscience says to me, “What had poor Miss Watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word?  What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean?  Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how.  That’s what she done.”
I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead.  I fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was fidgeting up and down past me.  We neither of us could keep still.  Every time he danced around and says, “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I thought if it was Cairo I reckoned I would die of miserableness.

Miss Watson has been difficult and mean at times to Huck, and here he is worrying about her? He is using her as a fill-in for society at large, for the outside influences on his thinking and morality. He us caught up in a fight with conventional morality versus a heart that has clearly been shaken by Jim's humanity.

Huck is now living into the widow's providence, the turning toward praying for and working for the good of others. Whereas before he figured that this would only help the other and not himself, he has clearly benefited from paying attention to Jim's welfare.

But the recognition that he is in a struggle ('I most wished I was dead') shows that his spiritual journey has taken a turn. The influence of the prior chapter's cruel trick and rebuke from Jim has triggered this crisis of conscience.

In my own story, I believe that when I read this book as a child, not understanding much about racism or satire, I was reading the story of a boy's adventure with a negro fool/minstrel. I had no developed sense of temperament, or heart as twain calls it. Instead, my conscience was totally controlled by the conventional morality of my all white community, my white parents and grandparents, and what society was telling me about blacks from the movies and tv.
Thus, Huck is having this crisis, and I'm seeing it for the first time because I'm a man, and I've seen the alternative to the conventions of morality, based on real emotional and spiritual knowledge of blacks.

While Huck is having his moment of conscience, Jim is dreaming of freedom, and imagining what he will do:

Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself.  He was saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two children, and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they’d get an Ab’litionist to go and steal them.

Jim models love. Jim models courage.
Jim has practical plans. One guesses that his motivation to run away was at first the prospect of being sold further down the river. But now that he has been free for awhile, and seems close to freedom, he turns to realizing a reunification with his family.
The reader must be rejoicing for Jim here. We learn for the first time that his family has been separated and that Jim's freedom is not just for himself, but for his family.
We want Huck to respond with support and a further call to help him, but Huck is still in full conscience wresting mode:

It most froze me to hear such talk.  He wouldn’t ever dared to talk such talk in his life before.  Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free.  It was according to the old saying, “Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.”  Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking.  Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him.  

Who is the real Huck Finn? Is it the Huck who seems to be shocked that Jim would want to reunite with his family? Whose heart is causing him to wrestle with this?
Or is it the racist Huck who recites the old saying. (There is no literary device to counter the plain fact that Huck here has returned to the conventions of morality and racism- give Jim and inch.... etc.)

And then, in a classic example of what Ignatius of Loyola called false consolation, Huck decides to go against his heart and embrace the temptations of society for acceptance:

My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, “Let up on me—it ain’t too late yet—I’ll paddle ashore at the first light and tell.”  I felt easy and happy and light as a feather right off.  All my troubles was gone.  I went to looking out sharp for a light, and sort of singing to myself. 

Ignatius states that the 'evil spirit' in false consolation uses the appearance of lightness and unburdened-ness as a means to continue to draw the person away from God (or in this case, the heart).

Jim thinks he sees Cairo, and Huck uses that as a pretense to begin his betrayal of Jim.
He gets into the canoe, promising Jim he'll verify the presence of Cairo.
But Jim, once again shows his care and concern for his friend Huck:

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:
“Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’ Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck; Huck done it.  Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”

What a thing to say to Huck in the middle of his crisis! And to think that his false consolation was succeeding by planning the betrayal.
What does Huck do? Continue the narrative that he is responsible for this freedom, and now Jim has even confirmed it out loud! Or absorb, one more time, the loving words that Jim has spoken about his friend Huck? Not only words, but the man put his own old coat in the bottom of the canoe. For Huck's comfort? Sacrificing his own comfort for his friend?

Huck is determined to betray, but as he paddles away, the false consolation fades:

I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this, it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me.  I went along slow then, and I warn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I warn’t.  When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
“Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on’y white genlman dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”
Well, I just felt sick.  But I says, I got to do it—I can’t get out of it.  Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and they stopped and I stopped.  One of them says:
“What’s that yonder?”
“A piece of a raft,” I says.
“Do you belong on it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any men on it?”
“Only one, sir.”
“Well, there’s five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of the bend.  Is your man white or black?”
I didn’t answer up prompt.  I tried to, but the words wouldn’t come. I tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn’t man enough—hadn’t the spunk of a rabbit.  I see I was weakening; so I just give up trying, and up and says:
“He’s white.”

Once again his conscience has lost the battle with his heart.

Huck then invents the 'small pox' narrative that prevents the men from boarding the raft and discovering Jim.

Huck, having wrestled with his conscience and lost, is now in consolation, but he doesn't know it. He has chosen love and friendship. He admits that he would feel bad if he had succeeded in turning Jim in.  He has chosen the widow's Providence:

WIDOWS PROVIDENCE


They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little ain’t got no show—when the pinch comes there ain’t nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat.  Then I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now?  No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now.  Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?  I was stuck.  I couldn’t answer that.  So I reckoned I wouldn’t bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.

Once again Jim expresses his appreciation for Huck's help, and admiration for the way Huck tells his strechers:

“I was a-listenin’ to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne to shove for sho’ if dey come aboard.  Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf’ agin when dey was gone.  But lawsy, how you did fool ‘em, Huck!  Dat wuz de smartes’ dodge!  I tell you, chile, I’spec it save’ ole Jim—ole Jim ain’t going to forgit you for dat, honey.”

And then, although the reader doesn't know it, the novel abruptly takes a fatal turn, as Huck and Jim discover that they have missed Cairo, and in just a few sentences, they also lose the canoe.

When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough, and outside was the old regular Muddy!  So it was all up with Cairo.

and

...when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!

and then, as they decide to get back on the raft and continue downstream to buy another canoe, a steamboat comes along and plows into the raft. Jim and Huck go overboard, and when the chapter ends Jim is gone and Huck is climbing up on the shore.

Huck/Jim Encounter 9 - Chapter 15

At the beginning of the chapter, Huck and Jim are on the river. Huck is in the canoe, looking for spot on a tow-head to tie the raft up for the night, but the raft tears loose and Huck and Jim get separated in the fog.

Huck starts the first paragraph reviewing the plans -  to get to Cairo, where the Ohio river meets the Mississippi, sell the raft and get on a steamboat up the Ohio. Out of trouble for both; freedom for Jim.

Huck calls Jim a fool:

I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. 

Huck finally catches up to Jim (miles of river have been covered). He is asleep. The raft is smashed up in places, and there are leaves and branches and dirt.

 So she’d had a rough time.

And here begins one of the pivot points in the novel. Jim has been a companion. A father figure. A protector. A teacher. But he has been a runaway slave and still an inferior.

Jim expresses how relieved he is that Huck is alright.

“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck?  En you ain’ dead—you ain’ drownded—you’s back agin?  It’s too good for true, honey, it’s too good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o’ you.  No, you ain’ dead! you’s back agin, ‘live en soun’, jis de same ole Huck—de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!”

"It's too good to be true. .... thanks to goodness."

Jim is glad to see Huck. He obviously thought he had lost him. Huck had previously thought he had lost Jim:

I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him.  I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe and said I wouldn’t bother no more.  I didn’t want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn’t help it; so I thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.

He reckons it's all up with Jim. The contrast of emotions is stark. Jim is beside himself with joy and relief. Huck couldn't 'bother no more'.

Huck sees that Jim is ripe for a trick, and so convinces Jim that he has been dreaming. Instead of responding with similar warmth, he must have also been glad to see Jim, he responds with what turns out to be another cruel 'Tom Sawyer-like' trick.

Jim's dream interpretation is a pretty accurate foretelling of the rest of the book:

So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable.  Then he said he must start in and “‘terpret” it, because it was sent for a warning.  He said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him.  The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn’t try hard to make out to understand them they’d just take us into bad luck, ‘stead of keeping us out of it.  The lot of towheads was troubles we was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn’t talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the free States, and wouldn’t have no more trouble.

The premonition that there were quarrelsome people ahead and all kinds of mean folks is spot on. The big clear river in the free States is off the mark, unless you count that as Jim's freedom granted by Miss Watson.

Fair enough. Jim did a good job at interpreting the dream.

But then Huck does his reveal:

“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does these things stand for?”
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar.  You could see them first-rate now.

You can hear Huck laughing at Jim on the inside. What does he expect of Jim? Will Jim see the joke and laugh at his cleverness? Has he mistaken Jim for Tom Sawyer?
And how about the reader?
Is the reader, in anticipation of the joke's climax, about to have a laugh? Or does the reader feel the sting of the cruel practical joke?

“What do dey stan’ for?  I’se gwyne to tell you.  When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’.  En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie.  Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.”
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that.

It is the subtle satire that is at work, inviting the reader to catch themselves as they were prepared to have a good laugh at the expense of Jim, powered by the racism of seeing the minstrel humiliated for a laugh, when Jim instead responds with his burst of humanity.

A friend doesn't make another friend feel ashamed. Jim names Huck a friend.
Jim pours out his heart - I didn't care no more what become of me.....
Jim is angry, and calls Huck the equivalent of 'nigger' - trash.
Jim expresses his dignity.
Jim also controls the scene for the first time when he walks away from Huck, the white boy, and says nothing more.

At this point, Huck could have become the boy who, having been caught in his cruelty, just makes excuses. "Hey Jim, I was just kidding." or "C'mon Jim, where's your sense of humor?"

But Huck expresses, on behalf of himself and the reader, the remorse that comes when the struggle between the heart and the conscience ends up with a broken heart:

But that was enough.  It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.  I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

And so we are at a point in Huck's spiritual development when he realizes that he has been mean to another human, someone who views him as a friend, who would even sacrifice himself for Huck. This is the realization of a man, not a boy who has been caught red-handed in a trick. 

He repents.

And the reader must ask, 'why didn't you know that he would feel that way?' Because you've been around Tom Sawyer too much? Because you view Jim is without depth of feelings? Because you misunderstood 'love' for buddy-ship?

We aren't told the content of the conversation where Huck 'humbled' himself; but the reader gets to imagine because they have probably thought through what they might say after they were tempted to have a laugh at Jim's expense.

It recalls the snake incident where Huck plays a trick on Jim that results in the snake bite. But Huck was able to cover that up. Nevertheless, it was Huck's first lesson- Jim feels pain.

Hearn points out that Huck feels guilt for his treatment of a slave probably for the first time in his life. (Hearn)

Toni Morrison suggests that Huck is unable to articulate his feelings for Jim and his remorse for this cruelty directly to Jim; only to the reader.

We see Jim as the adult, and Huck as the child. 

Rascism

Authors such as Ellison, Morrison and John H. Wallace weigh in on their commentaries.

From Wallace:

'Huckleberry Finn uses the pejorative term 'nigger' profusely. It speaks of black Americans with implications that they are not honest, they are not as intelligent as whites and they are not human. All this, of course, is meant to be satirical. It is. But at the same time, it ridicules blacks. This kind of ridicule is extremely difficult for black youngsters to handle. I maintain that it constitutes mental cruelty, harrassment, and outright racial intimidation to force black students to sit in a classroom to read this kind of literature about themselves.'

Huck remarks about Jim after a particularly human story from Jim (TBD):

'I knowed he was white inside' This is probably the most racist line in the book, and exhibits the racism not only of Huck, but probably the unconscious racism of Twain.

Scenes constructed to counter racism using satire:

Pap's tirade against learned blacks in Chapter 6, known as the 'call that a govment?' speech:

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.  And what do you think?  They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything.  And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home.  Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?  It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out.  I says I’ll never vote agin.  Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.  And to see the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way.  I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know.  And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet.  There, now—that’s a specimen.  They call that a govment that can’t sell a free nigger till he’s been in the State six months.  Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and—”

Not only does the reader laugh when Pap threatens to leave the country in the prior paragraph

Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told ‘em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. 

and then he threatens to stop voting because a freed black man can vote, but we can hear our inner readers voice shout 'Go ahead, what's stopping you?'.


And in Chapter 32, the reader is asked to confront the racism of Aunt Sally, and for a moment, his own racism:

“Now I can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry for it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last! We been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep’ you?—boat get aground?”
“Yes’m—she—”
“Don’t say yes’m—say Aunt Sally.  Where’d she get aground?”
I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she would be coming up—from down towards Orleans. That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that way.  I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got aground on—or—Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
“It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little.  We blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m.  Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. 

And there is a whole trope of laughing at Jim through out the novel as a fool, a minstrel show, superstitious, a person who wouldn't mind ridicule or being used for adventure.

Huck/Jim Encounter 8 - Chapter 14

Huck and Jim regroup and begin to look through the 'truck' that they got from the wreck, and Huck tells Jim what happened inside the wreck and at the ferry boat.

I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn’t want no more adventures. 

Later the reader will learn why Jim doesn't like adventures- they usually involve his humiliation, or worse, mistreatment.

Jim explains to Huck that he saw no way out at the wreck. He would either be drowned because the skiff was gone, or he would be discovered and turned in, eventually to be sold south.

Well, he was right; he was most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger.

Huck is still not treating Jim as his equal. The age-old racist argument that the black man was ignorant and so expressing surprise when this level of intelligent thought is noticed.

Huck begins to read the 'truck' books to Jim.

They have a discussion about Solomon, and when Jim protests that Solomon was no wise man because he seemed to think it was ok to chop a child in half, Huck doesn't get the chance to explain the 'point' to him. The reader wonders whether Huck really understood the point, or at least, could explain it.
But Jim does have another point. Solomon, with so many wives, and thus so many children, could afford to value life less, and chop a child or two in half.

Huck doesn't press the point. We are still hearing from a Huck that thinks Jim is stupid or inferior.

I never see such a nigger.  If he got a notion in his head once, there warn’t no getting it out again. 

Huck changes the conversation to talk about the dauphin, who might have escaped to America. Thus comes another conversation about misunderstanding. Huck tries to explain that there are other languages than English, but Jim won't have any of it. Is a Frenchman a man?

“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”
“No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said—not a single word.”
“Well, now, I be ding-busted!  How do dat come?”
“I don’t know; but it’s so.  I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?”
“I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn’t white.  I wouldn’t ‘low no nigger to call me dat.”
“Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything.  It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”
“Well, den, why couldn’t he say it?”
“Why, he is a-saying it.  That’s a Frenchman’s way of saying it.”
“Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ‘bout it.  Dey ain’ no sense in it.”
“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”
“No, a cat don’t.”
“Well, does a cow?”
“No, a cow don’t, nuther.”
“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”
“No, dey don’t.”
“It’s natural and right for ‘em to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”
“Course.”
“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?”
“Why, mos’ sholy it is.”
“Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us?  You answer me that.”
“Is a cat a man, Huck?”
“No.”
“Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man.  Is a cow a man?—er is a cow a cat?”
“No, she ain’t either of them.”
“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em.  Is a Frenchman a man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, den!  Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man?  You answer me dat!”
I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

In fact, Hearn argues, Jim has in a way won the argument. But at this point, well into the 14th chapter of the book, Huck is still vacillating between admiration and friendship and contempt (?). But Huck at this point is just as ignorant as Jim. His own interpretation of the bible story or the history of France is that of an uneducated boy. At least Jim shows the signs of an adult who uses reason to win an argument.

Huck/Jim Encounter 7 - Chapter 13

Huck and Jim have escaped from the wreck with the skiff that the murdering gang had planned to use for their own escape. Now the men were trapped on the wreck, and Huck and Jim were again floating on the river.

Pretty soon Huck's conscience begins to bother him, even for a gang of murderers:

Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men—I reckon I hadn’t had time to before.  I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix.  I says to myself, there ain’t no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it?  So says I to Jim:
“The first light we see we’ll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it’s a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then I’ll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes.”

Somehow, being hung is better than drowning. Of course one involves public justice and the other is likely anonymous. Still, it invokes the humor in the situation.

And as for Huck imagining that someday he will be a murderer, what brought that on? Perhaps the self-indictment that he is an abolitionist?

So Huck does arrange for a ferryman to try to rescue the gang from the wreck, but it's too late. We never hear whether the gang is dead or not, only that the wreck became dislodged and Huck sees it, and the ferryman before he re-joins Jim.

...so we struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in and slept like dead people.

Jim is not helping here. Huck is on his own, but trying to bring the gang to justice. It can be argued that God's justice was served as they all drowned, rather than facing the jury and noose.

Also notice that Huck does not risk Jim's freedom. He doesn't involve Jim at all.

Huck/Jim Encounter 6 - Chapter 12

Huck and Jim are on the river in a raft.
They find a 'tow-head' and hide the raft during the day, then take off again at night. There is talk between them, mostly about what they should do.

Then there are the moments when they have free time, and Huck is free to contemplate the river:

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current that was making over four mile an hour.  We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness.  It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle.  We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.

They are safe. And here Huck has given us a clue about his relationship with Jim. They talk, but not loudly. They laughed, not often, but they did laugh.
This image of Huck and Jim laying on their backs, side by side, on the raft, looking at the stars is easy to overlook. But they are there, as friends, as fellow fugitives, enjoying each others company. The thought of betrayal is no longer in their conversations. They have the tranquility of 'nothing ever happened to us at all'.

In order to eat they have to 'borrow' food. Pap had told Huck that it's ok to borrow food if you intend to pay it back. The widow said it was just plain stealing.

Jim uses his own logic to say Pap and the Widow were both half right:

Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind.  Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.  Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more—then he reckoned it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others.  So we talked it over all one night, drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what.  But towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons.  We warn’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now.  I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three months yet.

Apparently, according to the footnotes in Hearn, theft of food along the river was OK to feed yourself; theft of money was not OK.

So Jim is trying to work out justification for the theft, but we don't learn why. But of course Jim can't just go into town and buy food. In order to survive Jim has to either scrounge for food, shoot for it, or steal from the farms along the river. In the readers mind, Jim has the right to steal food since the presence of slavery doesn't allow him to procure food legally , as Huck can and does do.

This lesson for Huck is subtle. Jim acknowledges it is stealing. He also acknowledges that he has no choice, except if he names it as borrowing, with the intention, when he is free, of paying it back.


They encounter a wrecked steamboat, and Huck wants to board and explore. Jim is against it.

But Jim was dead against it at first.  He says:
“I doan’ want to go fool’n ‘long er no wrack.  We’s doin’ blame’ well, en we better let blame’ well alone, as de good book says.  Like as not dey’s a watchman on dat wrack.”

Huck convinces Jim, but Jim has a few cautionary words:

Jim he grumbled a little, but give in.  He said we mustn’t talk any more than we could help, and then talk mighty low. 

They encounter some men on the boat, who apparently are about to murder one of their gang. Jim takes off for the raft.

Huck stays long enough to hear of the murderous plans.

Here Huck shows his genius for devising plans. He has encountered 3 gang members who are about to murder one of their own for betrayal. If he allows them to escape, they'll be murdering one of the members when the boat sinks (although the members have their own 'moral' discussion- it's better to arrange that the man die in the sinking of the wreck than to kill him):

“Well, my idea is this:  we’ll rustle around and gather up whatever pickins we’ve overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then we’ll wait.  Now I say it ain’t a-goin’ to be more’n two hours befo’ this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river.  See? He’ll be drownded, and won’t have nobody to blame for it but his own self.  I reckon that’s a considerble sight better ‘n killin’ of him.  I’m unfavorable to killin’ a man as long as you can git aroun’ it; it ain’t good sense, it ain’t good morals.  Ain’t I right?”

So Huck's plan is to steal their boat so they all are trapped, and the sheriff will get them, if they don't drown!

Here Huck is showing his sense of justice. He could have just run away from a bad situation.


Huck shortly finds Jim again, who informs him that the raft broke loose.

“Oh, my lordy, lordy!  raf‘?  Dey ain’ no raf’ no mo’; she done broke loose en gone I—en here we is!”