汤姆历险记Chapter 8 勇当海盗，预演绿林

Chapter 8
      
      
        
            
      
   
    TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of
    returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small "branch"
    two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water
    baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the
    summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the
    valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it,
    and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring;
    the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that
    was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this
    seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The
    boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his
    surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands,
    meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half
    envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and
    slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and
    caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve
    about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he could be willing to
    go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. What had he done? Nothing. He had meant
    the best in the world, and been treated like a dog -- like a very dog. She would be sorry
    some day -- maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!

    But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at
    a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again.
    What if he turned his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away --
    ever so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas -- and never came back any more!
    How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown recurred to him now, only to fill him
    with disgust. For frivolity and jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they
    intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the
    romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all war-worn and
    illustrious. No -- better still, he would join the Indians, and hunt buffaloes and go on
    the warpath in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West, and
    away in the future come back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint,
    and prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a blood-curdling
    war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions with unappeasable envy. But no,
    there was something gaudier even than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! now his
    future lay plain before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would
    fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing
    seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the storm, with his grisly flag
    flying at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old
    village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and
    trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his
    crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag
    unfurled, with the skull and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the
    whisperings, "It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate! -- the Black Avenger of the Spanish
    Main!"

    Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from home and enter
    upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore he must now begin to get ready.
    He would collect his resources together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to
    dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded hollow. He
    put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:

    "What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"

    Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it up and disclosed
    a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides were of shingles. In it lay a
    marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless! He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and
    said:

    "Well, that beats anything!"

    Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The truth was, that a
    superstition of his had failed, here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon
    as infallible. If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it
    alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you
    would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there,
    meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But now, this thing had actually
    and unquestionably failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.
    He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its failing before. It did
    not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find
    the hiding-places afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided
    that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he would satisfy himself
    on that point; so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little
    funnel-shaped depression in it. He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this
    depression and called --

    "Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell
    me what I want to know!"

    The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then
    darted under again in a fright.

    "He dasn't tell! So it was a witch that done it. I just knowed it."

    He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up
    discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just
    thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it. But he could not find
    it. Now he went back to his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had
    been standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble from his pocket
    and tossed it in the same way, saying:

    "Brother, go find your brother!"

    He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must have fallen short
    or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last repetition was successful. The two
    marbles lay within a foot of each other.

    Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the
    forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away
    some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin
    trumpet, and in a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with
    fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast, and then
    began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way and that. He said cautiously 每 to an imaginary company:

    "Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."

    Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. Tom called:

    "Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?"

    "Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that -- that --"

    "Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting -- for they talked
    "by the book," from memory.

    "Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"

    "I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."

    "Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute with thee
    the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"

    They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, struck a fencing
    attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful combat, "two up and two
    down." Presently Tom said:

    "Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"

    So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and by Tom
    shouted:

    "Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"

    "I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of it."

    "Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in the book. The
    book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor Guy of Guisborne.' You're to
    turn around and let me hit you in the back."

    There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack and
    fell.

    "Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill you. That's
    fair."

    "Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."

    "Well, it's blamed mean -- that's all."

    "Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and lam me with a
    quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be Robin Hood a little while
    and kill me."

    This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then Tom became Robin
    Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength away through his
    neglected wound. And at last Joe, representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged
    him sadly forth, gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow
    falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he shot the arrow
    and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a nettle and sprang up too gaily for a
    corpse.

    The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there
    were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done
    to compensate for their loss. They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood
    Forest than President of the United States forever.