Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
Contents
CHAPTER IX
Overview
Huck and Jim secure a hidden cavern as their refuge and ride out a violent storm and flood. Exploring by canoe, they salvage a section of raft and then a drifting frame-house containing a dead man and valuable supplies. Jim shields Huck from the corpse’s face, and they return safely.
Summary
Huck leads Jim to a steep ridge on Jackson’s Island where they discover a large, cool cavern. Jim argues it will be a safe stash and storm shelter, so they fetch the canoe, move all their traps inside, and hide the canoe among willows. They cook at the cavern’s mouth as a fierce summer storm breaks.
The storm continues for days, swelling the river until low parts of the island and the Illinois bottom flood. By day, Huck and Jim quietly explore the shaded woods by canoe, noting how stranded animals grow tame with hunger.
At night they salvage a small section of lumber raft. Near dawn another night, they board a drifting, tilted two-story frame-house. As light grows, they see scattered belongings and a body in a corner. Jim checks and confirms the man was shot in the back and has been dead for days; he warns Huck not to look.
They gather useful items—clothes, tools, knives, candles, a hat, sewing notions, a fishline, a hatchet, and oddments—leaving empty trunks. With day brightening, Huck makes Jim lie under a quilt in the canoe to avoid detection from shore. Huck paddles to the Illinois side and slips back to the cavern safely with their haul.
Who Appears
- Huckleberry Finn (Huck)Guides exploration, agrees to hideout plan, scavenges supplies, and stealthily returns Jim and loot without being seen.
- JimProposes using the cavern, predicts the storm, investigates the corpse, shields Huck, and helps gather valuable items.
- Unidentified dead manCorpse found in the drifting house, shot in the back; catalyst for caution and unease.