The adventures of tom sawyer

Tom Sawyer that found it?”
The widow burst into tears. “Hush, hush, child, hush! I`ve told you before, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick!”
Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forevergone forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should cry.
These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck`s mind, and under the weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:
“Therehe`s asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain`t many left, now, that`s got hope enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching.”

Chapter 31.

NOW to return to Tom and Becky`s share in the picnic. They tripped along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the familiar wonders of the cavewonders dubbed with rather over-descriptive names, such as “The Drawing-Room,” “The Cathedral,” “Aladdin`s Palace,” and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky`s gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call, and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their quest. They wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to tell the upper world about. In one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man`s leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of this sort of conduct. He seized Becky`s hand and hurried her into the first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck Becky`s light out with its wing while she was passing out of the cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows. He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the children. Becky said:
“Why, I didn`t notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of the others.”
“Come to think, Becky, we are away down below themand I don`t know how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn`t hear them here.”
Becky grew apprehensive.
“I wonder how long we`ve been down here, Tom? We better start back.”
“Yes, I reckon we better. P`raps we better.”
“Can you find the way, Tom? It`s all a mixed-up crookedness to me.”
“I reckon I could find itbut then the bats. If they put our candles out it will be an awful fix. Let`s try some other way, so as not to go through there.”
“Well. But I hope we won`t get lost. It would be so awful!” and the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.
They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he would say cheerily:
“Oh, it`s all right. This ain`t the one, but we`ll come to it right away!”
But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was “all right,” but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, “All is lost!” Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep back the tears, but they would come. At last she said:
“Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let`s go back that way! We seem to get worse and worse off all the time.”
“Listen!” said he.
Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.
“Oh, don`t do it again, Tom, it is too horrid,” said Becky.
“It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know,” and he shouted again.
The “might” was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened; but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Beckyhe could not find his way back!
“Oh, Tom, you didn`t make any marks!”
“Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want to come back! NoI can`t find the way. It`s all mixed up.”
“Tom, Tom, we`re lost! we`re lost! We never can get out of this awful place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others!”
She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than she, she said.
So they moved on againaimlesslysimply at randomall they could do was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of revivingnot with any reason to back it, but only because it is its nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure.
By-and-by Tom took Becky`s candle and blew it out. This economy meant so much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his pocketsyet he must economize.
By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to pay attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time was grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down was to invite death and shorten its pursuit.
At last Becky`s frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and by-and-by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laughbut it was stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.
“Oh, how COULD I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I don`t, Tom! Don`t look so! I won`t say it again.”
“I`m glad you`ve slept, Becky; you`ll feel rested, now, and we`ll find the way out.”
“We can try, Tom; but I`ve seen such a beautiful country in my dream. I reckon we are going there.”
“Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let`s go on trying.”
They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after thisthey could not tell how longTom said they must go softly and listen for dripping waterthey must find a spring. They found one presently, and Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky said she thought she could go a little farther….