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!”