I tied up the canoe in its usual place and decided to sleep in it, but I couldn’t sleep much. Every time I woke up, I thought somebody had me by the neck. Finally I decided that I couldn’t live this way. I had to search until I found out who was on Jackson’s Island with me. I paddled my canoe along the shore of the island, keeping close to land. The moon shone almost as bright as day, but I didn’t see anything moving on the shore. When I got to the other end of the island, I landed the canoe.
By now it was almost morning. With my gun in my hand, I moved quietly through the woods to the place where I had seen the campfire ashes. After a little while, I saw the light of a campfire through the trees. As I crept closer, I saw a man lying on the ground with a blanket over him. It was Miss Watson’s black slave Jim!
I called out, "Hi, Jim!" and skipped out of the trees.
He jumped up and stared at me wildly as if I were a ghost. Then he moaned, "Don’t hurt me! I’ve never harmed a ghost. You get right back in that river again!"
I quickly made Jim understand that I wasn’t dead and that I was very glad to see him. I told him that I trusted him not to tell anyone where I was.
Jim told me that he’d been on the island since the night after I was killed, with nothing to eat but berries. Now he was very hungry. We walked together to my canoe. I got out my cornmeal, bacon and coffee, a frying pan, and a coffeepot. While Jim got a fire going and cooked bacon and cornmeal, I caught a catfish. Jim cleaned and fried it, and we had a delicious breakfast. Then we lay in the grass, relaxing. After a while, Jim asked who had been killed in that cabin, if it wasn’t me. I told him the whole story of how I tricked everyone. Then I asked him why he was camping on the island.
Jim looked very uneasy and didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, "You won’t tell anyone about me, will you?"
I promised I wouldn’t.
"Well, Huck—I ran away."
I was shocked. Black slaves belonged to their owners. It was against the law for slaves to run away. But I would never break my promise to Jim, and I told him so. Then Jim explained why he had run away from Miss Watson.
"Miss Watson promised that she wouldn’t sell me, but I saw a slave trader at her house recently, and I began to get uneasy. One night I went past the house, and I heard Miss Watson tell the Widow Douglas that she was going to sell me for eight hundred dollars. I didn’t wait to hear any more—I just ran away down to the river.
"I hid in a shack until morning. I thought maybe I could steal a rowboat, but there were people around all the time. I heard your Pap and other people talking about how you’d been murdered. I was very sorry to hear it, Huck.
"I was hungry, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew Miss Watson and the widow were going to be out all day, so they wouldn’t notice that I was gone until evening. When it got dark, I walked along the river until I came to a place with no houses. I realized that if I stole a boat, people would know I’d taken it. What I wanted was a raft of those logs that float down the river. When I saw one, I swam out to it, climbed on, and lay down on the wood. The river was moving fast, and I expected to be forty kilometers away by morning.
"But I didn’t have good luck. Men with lanterns in their boats came after me, looking for me. When one of them got so close that he would see me, I slid off the raft and swam to this island. I decided to stay here until the men stopped looking for me. I had some matches in my hat where they wouldn’t get wet, so I could make a fire. I was all right."
Just then some young birds came along, flying short little distances and landing often. Jim said it was a sign that it was going to rain.
Jim knew lots of signs. For instance, he said you shouldn’t count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that will bring bad luck. And you shouldn’t shake a tablecloth after sundown.
"Jim, it seems as if all the signs you know are about bad luck," I said. "Don’t you know any good luck signs?"
"Very few," he replied. "Why do you need to know if good luck is coming? Do you need to keep it away?"
Then he told me that if a man had hairy arms and a hairy chest, it meant he was going to be rich someday. Jim had hair on his arms and chest, so I asked him if he was rich.
"Yes, I am, now that I think of it," he said. "I own myself, and I’m worth eight hundred dollars, but I wish I had the money."