第21章

I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide.

This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot high.We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so thick.We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards Illinois.The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it.It was cool in there.Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.

Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, and they would never find us without dogs.And, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet?

So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up there.Then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows.We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.

The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on.So we built it there and cooked dinner.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.

We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it.Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so.It was one of these regular summer storms.

It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely;and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves;and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest -- FST! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs --where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.

"Jim, this is nice," I says."I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here.Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.""Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim.You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would, honey.Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile."The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last it was over the banks.The water was three or four foot deep on the island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom.On that side it was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old distance across -- a half a mile -- because the Missouri shore was just a wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.