The woman invited me into her house and said, "Take a chair."
I sat down. She looked at me closely and asked my name.
"Sarah Williams," I answered.
Then she asked where I was from, and I told her I came from Hookerville, about ten kilometers away.
I said that my mother was sick and I had come to look for my uncle, Abner Moore.
She explained that she had been living in the town for only two weeks and didn't know my uncle.
She invited me to stay the night, but I said that I would just rest for a while and then leave.
Then she began to talk about the recent murder in St. Petersburg.
"Who killed Huckleberry Finn?" I asked.
"Some people think it was his father," she said, "and some people think it was Jim, a runaway slave.
There's a reward for catching the slave—three hundred dollars.
After the boy was murdered, old Finn came into town.
He cried and begged Judge Thatcher for some money so he could hunt for the slave.
The last time anyone saw him, he was with some very tough-looking men.
Some people think old Finn killed his son so that he could get his money, and that he'll come back for it."
"Does that mean they've stopped hunting for the slave?" I asked.
"Oh no," she said. "Some people still think Jim did it.
And they would like that three hundred dollar reward.
My husband and his friends are out looking for Jim right now.
I told my husband he should look on Jackson's Island.
I've seen smoke over there at night, and I think the slave is hiding there."
I felt very nervous when she said this.
I needed something to do so that she would not see how scared I was.
I saw some sewing supplies sitting on the table beside me.
I picked up a needle from the table and tried to thread it, but I didn't do a good job.
The woman watched me, and finally she said, "What's your real name? Is it Bill? Tom?"
I started to shake and didn't know what to say.
But she said kindly, "I think you are a poor runaway boy who has been treated badly.
I'll keep your secret, and I'll give you some food for your journey, but I don't think you should try to pretend to be a girl.
When you thread a needle, you are supposed to hold the needle still and bring the thread to it.
You brought the needle to the thread, and no girl would do that."
I thanked the woman and left her house as quickly as I could, running back to the canoe.
I paddled over to the island and climbed up to our cave.
"Jim, wake up!" I cried. "We have to leave right away. They're after us!"
It was about one in the morning by the time we left the island.
We were on the big raft we had found a few days before.
We had piled all our supplies and our canoe on it.
When daylight came, we tied the raft up on the riverbank and hid it with branches.
Then we lay in the shade all day and watched the big steamboats going up and down the river.
I wondered if the men had found our campsite yet.
Just before we left, I had built a campfire to fool them.
I hoped they had sat by it all night, waiting for Jim to come back.
We spent every night on our raft. Jim used some planks to make a little hut for us in the middle of the raft.
The hut had a raised floor, and in the middle, we made a pit and filled it with earth. Here we could build a fire if we got cold.
Every night we traveled, floating downriver with the current.
On the fifth night, we passed the great city of St. Louis, which looked like the whole world lit up.
It was completely silent though—all the people were asleep.
We had lots of food to eat.
In the early morning, before the sun came up, I would sneak ashore into a farmer's field and take a watermelon or some corn.
Every evening I would go into a town to buy a little cornmeal or bacon. Sometimes I shot a duck.
One night there was a big thunderstorm. We stayed inside the hut as the rain poured down on our raft.
Flashes of lightning lit up the river, and suddenly I saw something ahead.
It was a wrecked steamboat caught on a rock.
I wanted to go aboard and have a look around, but Jim was against it.
"Maybe there's someone on board," he said.
"No one will be on a wreck like that," I argued. "And we might find some supplies on board."
We tied our raft up to the boat, and I explored it while Jim waited by the raft.
Suddenly I heard a frightened voice crying, "Oh, please don't, boys. I swear I will never tell."