The next morning, Tom and I got up very early and went down to the kitchen. We patted the dogs by the back door, and we talked to the black servant who had used the key the night before. We watched him fixing a tray of food, and we asked if it was for the dogs.
"No," he said with a smile. "Would you like to see who it’s for?"
"Yes," said Tom, and we followed the servant out to the shed. As soon as he unlocked the door, we ran inside. Jim’s leg was chained to the bed. He recognized us right away, but I made a sign for him to be quiet. I didn’t want anyone to guess that we knew him. The servant put down the tray and left. We just had a moment to whisper to Jim that we were going to set him free and then we had to leave.
It was still too early for breakfast, so Tom and I went into the woods. We gathered some chunks of rotting wood with glowing fungus that people call "foxfire." We could use them to give us a little light while we dug at night. "A lantern would be too bright," said Tom.
I was happy that our plan was going so well, but Tom was not. "There ought to be more to do," he said. "I wish Uncle Silas had put a guard on the shed door because then we could drug him." Then he smiled. "I know what we can do. We can make a ladder out of torn sheets and take it to Jim hidden inside a big pie. He can hide the ladder in his mattress until he needs it."
"But he doesn’t need a ladder," I said. "We’re going to dig him out."
"In a book I read once about escapes, there was a ladder hidden in a pie," retorted Tom. "We have to do things the right way."
He told me to take a sheet from the clothesline when Aunt Sally wasn’t looking. "And take a shirt too," he said, "for Jim to write a journal on. Prisoners always keep journals."
After breakfast, when no one was in the yard, I borrowed the sheet and the shirt. Tom and I put them in an old sack along with the foxfire and took the sack into the hut.
"Now all we need is something to dig with," said Tom.
"Look around us," I said. "There are picks and shovels here."
Tom looked at me with contempt. "When heroes are trying to escape in books, they never have shovels."
"Well, if we don’t use shovels, what do we use?" I asked.
"Pocketknives," said Tom.
"We’re going to dig under that shed with pocketknives?" I asked incredulously. "That’s crazy, Tom!" I was starting to become annoyed with him.
"I read a book once about a man who dug himself out of a castle—it took him 37 years," said Tom.
"We can’t take that long," I protested. "Uncle Silas has written to New Orleans to tell the plantation he has their runaway slave. Soon he’ll get a letter explaining that Jim isn’t from there."
Tom paused to think and then smiled at me. "We’ll just have to dig faster," he said. It did no good to argue with Tom. So I borrowed some pocketknives from the house, as he asked me to.
That night, after everyone was asleep, we went to the hut and started digging with the knives. The hut was right next to Jim’s shed. We planned to come up under Jim’s bed. We dug until about midnight. Our hole wasn’t very deep, and our hands were blistered. At last Tom sighed and said, "I hate to do it, but I think we’ll have to use the shovels. We can pretend that we’re using the knives."
The next night, using the tools in the hut, we dug all the way through to Jim’s shed. We lit a candle that we had borrowed from the house. Jim was so relieved to see us that he hugged us and almost cried. He wanted us to take him out of his prison right away.
I looked at Jim’s chain and saw that we could free him if we lifted his bed and slipped the chain off the leg of the bed. I wanted to do it, but Tom told Jim that we had other things to do first.
Jim told us that he thought it would be all right to wait. He said that Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas visited him every day to make sure that he was comfortable. He was getting decent food, enough water, and clean sheets from the servants.
Tom explained that we would be sending Jim a pie with a ladder hidden inside. He also gave Jim the shirt I had borrowed from the clothesline. He told Jim that he should write a journal on it with his blood.
"Tom, you’re a good boy," said Jim, "but these things make no sense to me."
I tried to explain. "Tom wants us to have an adventure, just like the ones in books. But trust me, Jim, we know how to free you. If you are in any danger, we’ll get you out right away."
Tom’s thirst for adventure was making me nervous. But I was so grateful to him for helping that I went along with his wild schemes.