Along the crest of the bluffs, overlooking the river, the city of Hannibal has made for itself a charming park, and at the highest point in this park there is to be unveiled, in a short time, a statue of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which, from its position, will command a view of many leagues of mile-wide Mississippi. It is peculiarly fitting that the memorial should be stationed in that place. Mark Twain loved the river. Even though it almost "got" him in his boyhood (he had "nine narrow escapes from drowning") he adored it; later, when his youthful ambition to become a river pilot was attained, he still adored it; and finally he wrote his love of it into that masterpiece, "Life on the Mississippi," of which Arnold Bennett has said: "I would sacrifice for it the entire works of Thackeray and George Eliot."
Looking up the river from the spot where the statue will be placed, one may see Turtle Island, where Tom and Huck used to go and feast on turtle's eggs—rowing there in that boat which, after they had so "honestly and industriously" stolen it, they painted red, that its former proprietor might not recognize it. Below is Glascox Island, where Nigger Jim hid. Glascox Island is often called Tom Sawyer's Island, or Mark Twain's Island, now. Not far below the island is the "scar on the hill-side" which marks the famous cave.
"For Sam Clemens," says Paine in his biography, "the cave had a fascination that never faded. Other localities and diversions might pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and ready for the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to the mystic door."
I suggested to my companion that, for the sake of sentiment, we, too, approach the cave by rowing down the river. And, having suggested the plan, I offered to take upon myself the heaviest responsibility connected with it—that of piloting the boat in these unfamiliar waters. All I required of him was the mere manual act of working the oars. To my amazement he refused. I fear that he not only lacks sentiment, but that he is becoming lazy.
We drove out to the cave in a Ford car.
Do you remember when Tom Sawyer took the boys to the cave at night, in "Huckleberry Finn"?
"We went to a clump of bushes," says Huck, "and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit candles and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about among the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: 'Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood.'"
That is the sort of cave it is—a wonderful, mysterious place, black as India ink; a maze of passageways and vaulted rooms, eaten by the waters of long ago through the limestone cliffs; a seemingly endless cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites, looking like great conical masses of candle grease; a damp, oppressive labyrinth of eerie rock formations, to kindle the most bloodcurdling imaginings.
As we moved in, away from the daylight, illuminating our way, feebly, with such matches as we happened to have with us, and with newspaper torches, the man who had driven us out there told us about the cave.
"They ain't no one ever explored it," he said. "'S too big. Why, they's a lake in here—quite a big lake, with fish in it. And they's an arm of the cave that goes away down underneath the river. They say they's wells, too—holes with no bottoms to 'em. Prob'ly that's where them people went to that's got lost in the cave."