Table of Contents

Chapter 14

Happy Camp of the Freebooters

WHEN TOM AWOKE in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up
and rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep
pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound
obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation. Beaded dew-drops stood upon the
leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire, and a thin blue
breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck still slept.

Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently the
hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of the
morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested
itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself
to the musing boy. A little green worm came crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting
two-thirds of his body into the air from time to time and “sniffing around,” then
proceeding again-for he was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm
approached him, of its own accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising
and falling, by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved
body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom’s leg and began a
journey over him, his whole heart was glad-for that meant that he was going to
have a new suit of clothes-without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical
uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, from nowhere in particular, and
went about their labors; one struggled manfully by with a dead spider five times
as big as itself in its arms, and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown
spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass-blade, and Tom bent down
close to it and said, “Ladybug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire,
your children’s alone,” and she took wing and went off to see about it-which
did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about
conflagrations and he had practiced upon its simplicity more than once. A
tumble-bug came next, heaving sturdily at its ball, and Tom touched the
creature, to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead. The birds
were fairly rioting by this time. A catbird, the northern mocker, lit in a tree over
Tom’s head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of
enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a
twig almost within the boy’s reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the
strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel and a big fellow of the
“fox” kind came kurrying along, sitting up at intervals to inspect and chatter at
the boys, for the wild things had probably never seen a human being before and
scarcely knew whether to be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and
stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far
and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.