The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A boy, a runaway man, and a raft on the big river between them
Page 1
Huck Finn lived with the Widow Douglas now, who had taken him in and was doing her best to make him over into a decent, church-going boy, with shoes and a collar and lessons every day. Huck didn't much care for it, but he put up with it. Then one day his Pap came back to town — a drunk, worthless man who had been gone a long while and now wanted Huck's money for himself. Pap took Huck away to a lonely cabin across the river and kept him there, shut away from the widow and from school, planning to live off him. Huck didn't like being locked up any better than he'd liked Sunday school, and he started watching for his chance to get away for good.
Page 2
Huck slipped away from Pap's cabin, smashed a pig to make it look like he'd been murdered, and paddled off in secret to Jackson's Island, a wooded island in the middle of the river, to hide and watch what happened. A few days later, exploring the island, he found a campfire still smoking — and there was Jim, Miss Watson's own slave, hiding out too. Jim had run off because he'd overheard Miss Watson talking of selling him down to New Orleans, away from his family forever. Huck was glad for the company, and the two of them decided to stay together and figure out what to do next, since the whole town thought Huck was dead and would be hunting for Jim as a runaway.
Page 3
Huck and Jim built a raft and set off down the big river at night, planning to reach Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi — from there Jim could travel up the Ohio into free country. But one night a thick fog rolled over the water, and in the blind dark and swirling mist they missed the mouth of the Ohio without even knowing it. By the time the fog cleared, they had drifted miles past Cairo, deeper into slave country instead of out of it. It was a hard thing to learn, and Jim was sorely disappointed, but there was nothing to do but keep going and watch for another chance to make things right.
Page 4
One stormy night Huck and Jim came upon a steamboat wrecked on a rock, half-sunk and leaning badly, its name — the Walter Scott — still readable on its side. Huck wanted to explore it, hoping for something worth taking, and talked Jim into easing the raft alongside. Climbing aboard in the dark, they crept along the tilted deck and overheard two rough men below, talking low and dangerous about a third man they'd tied up, debating whether to leave him to drown with the wreck rather than let him talk. Huck and Jim didn't wait to hear more. They slipped back to find their raft gone — torn loose in the storm — and instead took the robbers' own skiff tied nearby, rowing hard away into the dark before the men ever knew they'd been there.
Page 5
After the raft was lost, Huck washed up alone and was taken in kindly by the Grangerford family, a grand household on the Kentucky shore. He lived among them for weeks, treated almost like one of the family, and became friends with young Buck Grangerford, who was about his own age. But the Grangerfords were locked in a long, bitter feud with another family nearby, the Shepherdsons — a quarrel so old that nobody still living could say how it had started. One day the feud boiled over into real violence, and gunfire broke out along the riverbank and in the woods beyond the house. Buck and another young Grangerford were killed in it. Huck was horribly shaken by what he'd seen and heard, and as soon as he could, he found Jim and the mended raft hidden nearby and pushed back out onto the river, glad to be away from that house forever.
Page 6
Back on the river with Jim, Huck pulled the raft in near a muddy landing one day to find two strangers running from trouble of their own — a young-ish man who called himself the Duke, and an older one who called himself the King. Each claimed grand titles and sad fallen fortunes, though it was plain from the start that neither one was anything but a common swindler. Huck saw through them quick enough but didn't dare cross them, and the two talked their way aboard the raft, taking it over as if it were naturally theirs. From then on, Huck and Jim found themselves hauling two loud, greedy con men down the river with them, never knowing what trick the pair would try next in the little towns they passed.
Page 7
In the little town of Bricksville, Arkansas, the King and the Duke set up their boldest swindle yet: a ridiculous made-up show they called the Royal Nonesuch, charging the whole town admission for a performance that lasted only a few absurd seconds. The first night's crowd was so angry at being cheated that word spread fast, and by the second night the whole town was wise to the trick and waiting, furious, with rotten vegetables and worse in hand, ready to run the two con men out of town for good. The King and the Duke barely managed to grab Huck and get back to the raft and shove off into the dark river just ahead of the mob, leaving Bricksville in an uproar behind them.
Page 8
Further down the river, the King and the Duke heard of a dead man, Peter Wilks, who had left money and property to his three nieces, including a kind young woman named Mary Jane. The two con men boldly pretended to be the dead man's long-lost brothers, arrived just in time for the funeral, and set about cheating the sisters out of their whole inheritance with fine speeches and false tears. Huck went along with the scheme at first, but watching sweet, trusting Mary Jane be swindled right in front of him wore on his conscience until he couldn't bear it any longer. In secret, Huck found a way to hide the stolen gold where the sisters could find it later and warned Mary Jane enough to protect her, before slipping away from the house to find Jim again, leaving the King and the Duke to their lies.
Page 9
Huck learned that Jim had been captured again and was being held prisoner in a cabin on Silas Phelps's farm, waiting to be returned to his owner. Huck made his way there to free him, and by sheer luck found his old friend Tom Sawyer visiting the very same farm — the Phelpses were kin of Tom's. Rather than simply letting Jim out, Tom insisted on a long, complicated, storybook escape plan full of secret tunnels, rope ladders, and hidden messages, dragging it out far longer and more dangerously than it needed to be, just for the adventure of it. Huck went along with it for Jim's sake, worried the whole time that Tom's elaborate games would get them all caught before Jim could truly be freed.
Page 10
The escape went wrong in a dozen small ways, just as Tom's plans always did, and Tom himself was shot in the leg before it was all over — though he recovered fine and told the story proudly ever after. In the end it turned out Jim had been a free man the whole time: Miss Watson had died and freed him in her will, months before, though word of it hadn't reached anyone in time. Jim was free at last, truly and for good, with nothing left to run from. Huck was glad of it, through and through, but he found he still didn't want to go back to being civilized, with aunts and schools and shoes. So he made up his mind to get away from it all and head out west into the Indian Territory ahead of the rest, before anybody could start sivilizing him again.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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