ike a black string stretched
across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.

"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and--"

"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"

"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly
well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself."

"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on
the GROUND."

"Tom, do you know that to be so?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."

He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument,
if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a
maniac and sing out:

"Camels!--Camels!"

So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:

"Camels your granny; they're spiders."

"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in
the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away?
Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go
down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a
caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long."

"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."

"All right," he says, and give the command:

"Lower away."

As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes,
and a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with
tassels and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't,
and some was riding and some was walking. And the weather--well, it was
just roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now,
all of a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.

The men all set up a yell, and some of them f