Tom Sawyer Abroad Read online

  CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA

  "NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot aroundhis feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve thedifference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right northof us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by theweather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many milesnorth, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

  Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in theworld, unless it might be some kinds of birds--a wild pigeon, maybe, ora railroad.

  But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly ahundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird inthe world that could do that--except one, and that was a flea.

  "A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, stricklyspeakin'--"

  "He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"

  "I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. Hemus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."

  "I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"

  "Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but aflea don't."

  "He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"

  "Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em--anybody knows dat."

  "Can't a man walk miles?"

  "Yassir, he kin."

  "As many as a railroad?"

  "Yassir, if you give him time."

  "Can't a flea?"

  "Well--I s'pose so--ef you gives him heaps of time."

  "Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to judgeby, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that COUNTS,ain't it?"

  "Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom."

  "It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come togauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man andyour railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more thanabout ten miles in an hour--not much over ten thousand times his ownlength. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea canjump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make fivejumps a second too--seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in onelittle second--for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting--hedoes them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put yourfinger on him. Now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait;but you take an Eyetalian FIRST-class, that's been the pet of thenobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sicknessor exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his ownlength, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, whichis fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man could gofifteen hundred times his own length in a second--say, a mile and ahalf. It's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than fivethousand miles an hour. Where's your man NOW?--yes, and your bird,and your railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don't amount to shucks'longside of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled down small."

  Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:

  "Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"

  "Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."

  "Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had norespec' for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, deydo deserve it, dat's certain."

  "Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur inthe world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn itquicker than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul littlecarriages in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other wayaccording to their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers,doing it as exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They'vebeen learnt to do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose youcould cultivate a flea up to the size of a man, and keep his naturalsmartness a-growing and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, andkeener and keener, in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, doyou reckon? That flea would be President of the United States, and youcouldn't any more prevent it than you can prevent lightning."

  "My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."

  "There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any othercretur, man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingestof them all. People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and anelephant's, and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. Hecan lift two or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them cancome anywhere near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own,and is very particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or hisjudgment, or whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don'tever make a mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. Itain't so. There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, andI'm one of them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."

  "Mars Tom!"

  "It's so; I ain't joking."

  "Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn'tbelieve it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git asupply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, butthere it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it hadalways been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a millionof them as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.

  We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a littlespell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazyingalong twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doingfor the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in thatsolemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of sootheddown in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got tofeeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it.So we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a mostnoble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimesstretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.

  It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to findland and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean overit. We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn'twant to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'mostseemed as if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said thesame. And always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me,and pestering of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing andbothering, and sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me dothis, and making me do that and t'other, and always selecting outthe things I didn't want to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because Ishirked and done something else, and just aggravating the life out of abody all the time; but up here in the sky it was so still and sunshinyand lovely, and plenty to eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange thingsto see, and no nagging and no pestering, and no good people, and justholiday all the time. Land, I warn't in no hurry to git out and buck atcivilization again. Now, one of the worst things about civilization is,that anybody that gits a letter with trouble in it comes and tells youall about it and makes you feel bad, and the newspapers fetches you thetroubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted anddismal 'most all the time, and it's such a heavy load for a person. Ihate them newspapers; and I hate letters; and if I had my way I wouldn'tallow nobody to load his troubles on to other folks he ain't acquaintedwith, on t'other side of the world, that way. Well, up in a balloonthere ain't any of that, and it's the darlingest place there is.

  We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I eversee. The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and oncewe see a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on theearth, it seemed like, and his sha
dder laid on the sand by him like apuddle of ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have.

  Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He saidit was right along here that one of the cutest things in that bookhappened; so we looked down and watched while he told about it, becausethere ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that abook has talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had losthis camel, and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:

  "Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"

  And the man says:

  "Was he blind in his left eye?"

  "Yes."

  "Had he lost an upper front tooth?"

  "Yes."

  "Was his off hind leg lame?"

  "Yes."

  "Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"

  "Yes, but you needn't go into no more details--that's the one, and I'min a hurry. Where did you see him?"

  "I hain't seen him at all," the man says.

  "Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"

  "Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got ameaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed acamel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame inhis off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side becausehe only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed hehad lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod histeeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side--the antstold me that; the honey leaked out on the other--the flies told me that.I know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."

  Jim says:

  "Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."

  "That's all," Tom says.

  "ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"

  "I don't know."

  "Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"

  "No."

  Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:

  "Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to deplace whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, MarsTom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got noIDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"

  "No, I haven't."

  I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off thatway before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because Icould see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted outand the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't thinkit's fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tomhe whirls on me and says:

  "What do YOU think of the tale?"

  Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say itdid seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the talestopped square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn'tworth the trouble of telling.

  Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I reckonedhe'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be onlysad; and he says:

  "Some people can see, and some can't--just as that man said. Let alonea camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed thetrack."

  I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just oneof his irrulevances, I reckon--he was full of them, sometimes, when hewas in a close place and couldn't see no other way out--but I didn'tmind. We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn'tgit away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, Ireckon, much as he tried not to let on.