CHAPTER XVI

Huck and Jim drift at night behind a massive raft, anxiously watching for Cairo. As Jim anticipates freedom, Huck’s conscience torments him for aiding Jim’s escape from Miss Watson. Hearing Jim’s plans to save money, buy his wife, and free his children intensifies Huck’s moral crisis, and he resolves to paddle ashore at the first light and betray Jim.

When a light appears, Huck goes to inquire, but Jim’s gratitude weakens him. Two armed men in a skiff stop Huck, asking if the person on the raft is white or Black. Unable to turn Jim in, Huck lies that his family on the raft has smallpox. Terrified of contagion, the men keep their distance, direct Huck to a town downstream, and leave two twenty-dollar gold pieces on a board for him. Huck recognizes he would have felt equally miserable had he betrayed Jim and resolves to do whatever comes handiest thereafter.

Huck finds Jim hiding under the stern, and Jim praises Huck’s ruse. Planning to reach the free states by steamboat with their newfound money, they tie up by day. That night Huck asks a hostile fisherman if the town ahead is Cairo; it isn’t. By daylight they realize they have drifted past Cairo—Ohio’s clear water shows inside the channel. Their only hope is to backtrack by canoe after dark, but they discover the canoe has been stolen.

Forced to continue downstream on the raft and seek another canoe, they move through a thick gray night. A large steamboat bears down on them and, despite their lantern, plows through, smashing the raft. Huck and Jim dive opposite ways. Huck swims for the left bank with a plank, lands after a long crossing, and stumbles onto a big double log-house, where barking dogs pin him in place as the scene ends.