TOM SAWYER ABROAD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1163, 15 June 1894, Page 8

TOM SAWYER ABROAD.

By Huck Finn. Edited by Mahk Twain. [ln previous extracts the two American lads and their negro friend Jim travelled, iu their aerial car over portions of Africa. Our readers are now ro introduced to the trio as they arrive in Egypt. —Ed. Mail.] At last, sailing on a northeast course, we struck the east end of the Desert. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, wo see three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says •* It's the Pyramids of Egypt/' lb made my heart fairly jump. You see, 1 had seen a many and a many a picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they werereaZ, 'stead of imaginations, most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a curious thing, that tho more you hear about a grand and big and noble thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and gets to be a big dim wavery rigger made out of moonshine and nothing solid to it. It 's just so with George Washington, and the same with them Pyramids And moreover besides, the things they always said about them seemed to me to be stretchers. There was a feller come down to our school, once, and hid a piclure of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest Pyramid covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up in perfectly legular layers, like s'air-steps. Thirteen acres, you see, for just one building ; it *s a farm. And he said there wa* a hole in the Pyramid, and you could go in there with candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would find'a big stjne chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. As we sailed a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a long straight e-lgo like a blanket, and onto it was joined, edge to edge, a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it, and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile was another thing that was n't real to m ». Now I can tell you one thing which is dead certain J if you will fool along over three thousand miles of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water to look at it, and you 've been a considerable part of a week doinz it, the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will make your eyes water again It was just so with me, and the same with Jim And when Jim got so he could believe it was the land of Egypt he was looking at, ho wonid n't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees and took off his hat, because he said it was n't fitton for him to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was all stirred up, and says — "Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egyp \ en I 's 'lowed to look at it wid my own eyes! Ok Jim ain't worthy to see dis day !" And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful rfo bet veen him and Tom there was ta'k enough, Jim being excited because the land was so full of history—Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushes, Jacob coming down into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all them interesting things, and Tom just as excited too, because the land was so full of history that was in his line, about Noureddin, and Bedridden, and such like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and a raft of other Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done the things they let on they done, I don't believe. Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early-morning fogs started up, and it wai n't no use to sail over the top of it, because we would go by Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass straight for the place where the Pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted out, and then drop low and skim along pretty close to the ground and keep a sharp lookout. Tom took the helium, 1 stood by to let go the anchor, and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eye* and watch out for dau-

ger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not vory fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say

" Highst her a pint, Mars Tom, bighst her !" and up she would skip, a foot or two, and we would slide right over a flatroofed mud cabin, with people that h»d been a*leep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and stretch ; aud once when a feller was clear up on his legs so he could gap and stretch bot'or, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him off By ai.d by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we a straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a little, vory sudden, and Jim sung out iu an awful scare—

41 Oh, for do lan's sake, set her back. Mars Tom, here 'a de biggest giant oufen de llabian Nights a comin' for us !" and he went backward in the boat. Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill, a man's face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' be«n clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or mora ; then I come to, and Tom was holding the balloon steady whilst he canted his head back and got a good long look up at that awful face.

Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a begging way, and working his lips but not getting anything out. I took only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says—*4 He ain't alive, you fools, it 's the Sphinx I" I Hover see Tom look so little and like a fly ; but that was because the giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not dreadful, any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of sad, but not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give it an abused look, and you fdt sorrier for it, for that.

We stood off a pie?e, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a hundred and twentyfive foot long, and there was a dear little temple between its front and back paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand away and found that little ternp'e. It took a (Jawer of sand to cover that cretur ; 'most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckop. We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protept him, it being a foreign land, then we sailed off tp this and that and t' other distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and proportions, and Jim he the best he could, striking all the different kinds of attitudes an i positions he could study up ; the further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the Sphinx got. That 's tho way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom said ; he said Julius Caesar's slaves dfd n't know how big he was, they was too ctese to him.

Then we sailed off further and further till we cou'd n't see Jim at all, any more, and then the great tigger was at its noblest, a gazing out over the Nile valley so still and sslemu and lonesome, and all the little shabby huts and things that was scittered about it clean disappeared and gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet, which was the sand.

That wai the place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-lookiog and athinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made us feel quiefc and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over that ralley just that, sitne way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to itself for thousands of years, and nob< dy can't find out what they are to this day. a t last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering around on that velvet carpet, and some more aclimbing up the cretur'a back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of whits smoke, and told Tom to look. He done it, and siys—"They 'ro bugs. No—hold on; they' *hy, I believe.lhyy 're me i. Yes, it's men —men and camels, both. They are hauling a long ladder up onto the Sphinx's back—now ain't that odd? And now they 're trying to lean it up a—there 's some more puffs of smoke—it 's guns! Huck, they 're after Jim I* We clapped on the power, and went for them ab'iling. We was there in no time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered every which way, and let go all holts and fell We soared up and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim found him laying on top of the head panting and 'most t jckered out, partly from howling for help and partly from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time—a week, he said, bnt it war n't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding him mo. They had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but he war n't hit, and when they found he would n't stand up and the bullets could n't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder, and then he knowed it was all up with him if we did n't come pretty quick. Tom was very indignant, and asked him why he did n't show the flag

and command them to git, in tho name of the United States. Jim said he done it, but they never paid no attention. Tom Baid he would have this thing looked into at Washington, and says—--44 You'll see that they'll have to apolo gise for insulting tho flag, and pay an indemnity, too, on top of it, even if they git off that easy." Jim says—--44 What's an indemnity, Mars Tom ?" 44 It 's c»sh, that 's what it is." 44 Who gita it, Mars Tom V 44 Why, we do."

44 En who gits de apology V 44 The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the apology,, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money." 44 How much money will it be. Mars Tom ?"

44 Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three dollars apiece, and I don't know but more." 44 Well, den, we 'll take de money, Mara Tom, an' let de 'pology go. Hain't dat jo' notion, too ? En hain't it yourn, Huck?"

We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as any, so wo agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, ar.d 1 asked Tom if countries always apologised when they had done wrong, and he says—--44 Yes ; the little ones does."

We was sailing around examining the Pyramids, you know, and now wo soared up and roosted on the flat of the biggest one, and found it was just like what the man said down in our school. It was like four pairs of stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together in a point at the top, only these stair steps could n't be dumb the way you climb other stairs ; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids war n't far away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs crawling, we was so high above them.

Tom he couldn't hold himself he was so woiked up with gladness and astonishment to be in such a celebrated place. He siid he could n't scarcely believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody give the prince a bronzo horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to.

When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and before you can pull your mind together and do something, that silence has got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he was embarrassed, and neither of us could n't say a word. Well, Tom he glowered at me a minute, and says—--44 Come, out with it. What do you think ?"

I says— II Tom Sawyer, you don't believe that, yourself." " What's the reason I don't ? What's to hender me ?"

" There 's one thing to hender you ; it could n't happen, that 's all." "What 's the reason it could n't hap-

pen ?" " You tell me tho reason it could hap-

pen " 14 This baUoon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon." 1 " Why is it ?" 11 Why is it ? Well, ain't this balloon and the bronze horse the same thing undor different names V *'No, they 're not. One U a balloon and the other 's a horse. It 'a very different. Next ycu 'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing." *" Huck 'a got him ag'in ! Dty ain't no wieglin 1 outer d*tl" "Jim, you don't know what you 're talking about. And Suck don't. Look here, Huck, I 'll make it plain to y>u, so you can understand. You see, it Ain't the mere form that \s got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar, it 's the principle involved ; and the principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now ?" I turned it over in my mind, and says — "Torn, it ain'c no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no sort of proof of what a horse can do." "Shucks, Huck, you don't get the idea at all. Now look here a minute—it 's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air ?"

"Yes." " Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please 1" "Yes." "Don't we steer whichever way we want to?" " Yes." "And don't we land when and where we please ?" " Yes." "flow do we move the balloon and steer it ?" " By touching the buttons." "Nowl reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, the prince turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, • ■...■" ■

V ycu see. 1 knowed I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough." Ho felt so happy ho begun to whistle But me and Jim was silent, so he broke oft' surprised, and says—"Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it yet V I says—--44 Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions." 41 Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen. 44 As I unde r stand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg—the rest ain't of no consequence. A button is one shape, a peg is another shape, but that ain't any matter." 44 No, that ain't any matter, as long as they'vo both got tho same power." 44 All riijit then. What is the power that 's in a candle and in a match V 44 It 's the fire." 44 It 's the same in both, then ?" 44 Yes, just the same in both." 44 All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what will happen to that carpenter-shop l" 4v Sho 'W burn up" 44 And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle—will she burn up ?" II Of course she won't." 44 All right. Now tho fire 's the samo, both times. Why does the simp burn, and the pyramid don't ?" 44 Because the pyramid can't burn." 41 Aha ! and a horse can't fly \" 44 My lan', if Huck ain't g »t him ag'in ! Huck's landed him high on dry dis time, I tell you ! Hit 's de smartes' trap I ever see a body walk inter —en ef I—" But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and could n't go on, and Tom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own argu ment agin him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it that all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard mo and Jim try to argue it made him ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing, I was feeling pretty well satisfied. When I have got the beat of a person that way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people does, for 1 consider that if I was in his place I would n't wish him to crow over me. It *s better to be generous, that 's what I think.