“He said he would sail his balloon around the world”
He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn’t ever have his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on!
“And here was night coming on!”
He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat, and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.
We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn’t say much—only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track.
Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a late feel, and a late smell, too—about a two-o’clock feel, as near as I could make out—Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be asleep, and we’d better—
“Better what?” I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I knowed what he was thinking about.
“Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship,” he says.
I says: “No, sir! Don’ you budge, Tom Sawyer.”