e was. He said if I'd 'a' wanted it to hide
a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would
'a' been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn't see no
advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw
over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a
chance to hog a watermelon.

Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was
settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then
Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to
keep watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the
woodpile to talk. He says:

"Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed."

"Tools?" I says.

"Yes."

"Tools for what?"

"Why, to dig with. We ain't a-going to _gnaw_ him out, are we?"

"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig
a nigger out with?" I says.

He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:

"Huck Finn, did you _ever_ hear of a prisoner having picks and
shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig
himself out with? Now I want to ask you--if you got any
reasonableness in you at all--what kind of a show would _that_ give
him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key and done
with it. Picks and shovels--why, they wouldn't furnish 'em to a king."

"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do
we want?"

"A couple of case-knives."

"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"

"Yes."

"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."

"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the _right_
way--and it's the regular way. And there ain't no _other_ way, that
ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any
information about these things. They always dig out with a
case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid
rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and
ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the
Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that
way; how long was _he_ at it, you reckon?"

"I don't know."

"Well, guess."

"I don't know. A month and a half."

"_Thirty-seven year_--and he come out in China. _That's_ the kind. I
wish the bottom of _this_ fortress was solid rock."

"_Jim_ don't know nobody in China."

"What's _that_ got to do with it? N