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Huck practices his girl impersonation, then sets out for the Illinois shore. In a formerly abandoned shack, he finds a woman who looks forty, and also appears a newcomer. Huck is relieved she is a newcomer, since she will not be able to recognize him.

Chapters 11-13 Summary

The woman eyes Huckleberry somewhat suspiciously as she lets him in.
Huck introduces himself as "Sarah Williams," from Hookerville. The woman
"clatters on," eventually getting to Huck's murder. She reveals that Pap was suspected and nearly lynched, but people came to suspect Jim, since he ran away the same day Huck was killed. There is a three- hundred-dollar price on Jim's head. But soon, suspicions turned again to Pap, after he blew money the judge gave him to find Jim on drink. But he left town before he could be lynched, and now there is two hundred dollars on his head. The woman has noticed smoke over on Jackson's Island, and, suspecting that Jim might be hiding there, told her husband to look. He will go there tonight with another man and a gun. The woman looks at Huck suspiciously and asks his name.

He replies, "Mary Williams." When the woman asks about the change, he covers himself, saying his full name is "Sarah Mary Williams." She has him try to kill a rat by pitching a lump of lead at it, and he nearly hits.
Finally, she asks him to reveal his (male) identity, saying she understands that he is a runaway apprentice and will not turn him in. He says his name is George Peters, and he was indeed apprenticed to a mean farmer. She lets him go after quizzing him on farm subjects, to make sure he's telling the truth. She tells him to send for her, Mrs. Judith Loftus, if he has trouble. Back at the island, Huck tells Jim they must shove off, and they hurriedly pack their things and slowly ride out on a raft they had found.

Huck and Jim build a wigwam on the raft in Chapter Twelve. They spend a number of days drifting down river, passing the great lights of St. Louis on the fifth night. They "lived pretty high," buying, "borrowing", or hunting food as they need it. One night they come upon a wreaked steamship.
Over Jim's objections, Huck goes onto the wreck, to loot it and have an
"adventure," the way Tom Sawyer would. On the wreck, Huck overhears two robbers threatening to kill a third so that he won't "talk."

One of the two manages to convince the other to let their victim be drowned with the wreck. They leave. Huck finds Jim and says they have to cut the robbers' boat loose so they can't escape. Jim says that their own raft has broken loose and oated away. Huck and Jim head for the robbers' boat in Chapter Thirteen. The robbers put some booty in the boat, but leave to get some more money off the man on the steamboat. Jim and Huck jump right into the boat and head off as quietly as possible. A few hundred yards safely away, Huck feels bad for the robbers left stranded on the wreck since, who knows, he may end up a robber himself someday. They find their raft just before they stop for Huck to go ashore for help. Ashore,
Huck finds a ferry watchman, and tells him his family is stranded on the steamboat wreck. The watchman tell him the wreck is of the Walter Scott.
Huck invents an elaborate story as to how his family got on the wreck, including the niece of a local big shot among them, so that the man is more than happy to take his ferry to help. Huck feels good about his good deed, and thinks Widow Douglas would have been proud of him. Jim and Huck turn into an island, and sink the robbers' boat before going to bed.

Chapters 14-16 Summary

Jim and Huck find a number of valuables among the robbers' booty in
Chapter Fourteen, mostly trinkets and cigars. Jim says he doesn't enjoy
Huck's "adventures," since they risk his getting caught. Huck recognizes that Jim is intelligent, at least for what Huck thinks of a black person.
Huck astonishes Jim with his stories of kings. Jim had only heard of King
Solomon, whom he considers a fool for wanting to chop a baby in half. Huck cannot convince Jim otherwise. Huck also tells Jim about the "dolphin," son of the executed King Louis XVI of France, rumored to be wandering America.
Jim is incredulous when Huck explains that the French do not speak English, but another language. Huck tries to argue the point with Jim, but gives up in defeat.

Huck and Jim are nearing the Ohio River, their goal, in Chapter
Fifteen. But one densely foggy night, Huck, in the canoe, gets separated from Jim and the raft. He tries to paddle back to it, but the fog is so thick he loses all sense of direction. After a lonely time adrift, Huck is reunited with Jim, who is asleep on the raft. Jim is thrilled to see Huck alive. But Huck tries to trick Jim, pretending he dreamed their entire separation. Jim tells Huck the story of his dream, making the fog and the troubles he faced on the raft into an allegory of their journey to the free states. But soon Jim notices all the debris, dirt and tree branches, that collected on the raft while it was adrift.

He gets mad at Huck for making a fool of him after he had worried about him so much. "It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger," but Huck apologizes, and does not regret it. He feels bad about hurting Jim. Jim and Huck hope they don't miss
Cairo, the town at the mouth of the Ohio River, which runs into the free states. Meanwhile, Huck's conscience troubles him deeply about helping Jim escape from his "rightful owner," Miss Watson, especially after her consideration for Huck. Jim can't stop talking about going to the free states, especially about his plan to earn money to buy his wife and children's freedom, or have some abolitionists kidnap them if their masters refuse. When they think they see Cairo, Jim goes out on the canoe to check, secretly resolved to give Jim up. But his heart softens when he hears Jim call out that he is his only friend, the only one to keep a promise to him.
Huck comes upon some men in a boat who want to search his raft for escaped slaves. Huck pretends to be grateful, saying no one else would help them.
He leads them to believe his family, on board the raft, has smallpox. The men back away, telling Huck to go further downstream and lie about his family's condition to get help. They leave forty dollars in gold out of pity. Huck feels bad for having done wrong by not giving Jim up.

But he realizes that he would have felt just as bad if he had given Jim up. Since good and bad seem to have the same results, Huck resolves to disregard morality in the future and do what's "handiest." Floating along, they pass several towns that are not Cairo, and worry that they passed it in the fog. They stop for the night, and resolve to take the canoe upriver, but in the morning it is gone{ more bad luck from the rattlesnake. Later, a steamboat drives right into the raft, breaking it apart. Jim and Huck dive off in time, but are separated. Huck makes it ashore, but is caught by a pack of dogs.

Chapters 17-19 Summary

A man finds Huck in Chapter Seventeen and calls off the dogs. Huck introduces himself as George Jackson. The man brings "George" home, where he is eyed cautiously as a possible member of the Sheperdson family. But they decide he is not. The lady of the house has Buck, a boy about Huck's age (thirteen or fourteen) get Huck some dry clothes. Buck says he would have killed a Shepardson if there had been any. Buck tells Huck a riddle, though Huck does not understand the concept of riddles. Buck says Huck must stay with him and they will have great fun. Huck invents an elaborate story of how he was orphaned. The family, the Grangerfords, offer to let him stay with them for as long as he likes. Huck innocently admires the house and its (humorously tacky) finery. He similarly admires the work of a deceased daughter, Emmeline, who created (unintentionally funny) maudlin pictures and poems about people who died. "Nothing couldn't be better" than life at the comfortable house.

Huck admires Colonel Grangerford, the master of the house, and his supposed gentility. He is a warm- hearted man, treated with great courtesy by everyone. He own a very large estate with over a hundred slaves. The family's children, besides Buck, are Bob, the oldest, then Tom, then
Charlotte, aged twenty-five, and Sophia, twenty, all of them beautiful.
Three sons have been killed. One day, Buck tries to shoot Harney
Shepardson, but misses. Huck asks why he wanted to kill him. Buck explains the Grangerfords are in a feud with a neighboring clan of families, the
Shepardsons, who are as grand as they are. No one can remember how the feud started, or name a purpose for it, but in the last year two people have been killed, including a fourteen-year-old Grangerford. Buck declares the
Shepardson men all brave. The two families attend church together, their ri es between their knees as the minister preaches about brotherly love. After church one day, Sophia has Huck retrieve a bible from the pews. She is delighted to find inside a note with the words "two-thirty." Later, Huck's slave valet leads him deep into the swamp, telling him he wants to show him some water-moccasins. There he finds Jim! Jim had followed Huck to the shore the night they were wrecked, but did not dare call out for fear of being caught. In the last few days he has repaired the raft and bought supplies to replace what was lost. The next day Huck learns that Sophie has run off with a Shepardson boy. In the woods, Huck finds Buck and a nineteen- year-old Grangerford in a gun-fight with the Shepardsons. The two are later killed. Deeply disturbed, Huck heads for Jim and the raft, and the two shove off downstream. Huck notes, "You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."

Huck and Jim are lazily drifting down the river in Chapter Nineteen.
One day they come upon two men on shore eeing some trouble and begging to be let onto the raft. Huck takes them a mile downstream to safety. One man is about seventy, bald, with whiskers, the other, thirty. Both men's clothes are badly tattered. The men do not know each other but are in similar predicaments. The younger man had been selling a paste to remove tartar from teeth that takes much of the enamel off with it. He ran out to avoid the locals' ire. The other had run a temperance (sobriety) revival meeting, but had to ee after word got out that he drank. The two men, both professional scam-artists, decide to team up. The younger man declares himself an impoverished English duke, and gets Huck and Jim to wait on him and treat him like royalty. The old man then reveals his true identity as the Dauphin, Louis XVI's long lost son. Huck and Jim then wait on him as they had the "duke." Soon Huck realizes the two are liars, but to prevent
"quarrels," does not let on that he knows.

Chapters 20-22 Summary

The Duke and Dauphin ask whether Jim is a runaway, and so Huckleberry concocts a tale of how he was orphaned, and he and Jim were forced to travel at night since so many people stopped his boat to ask whether Jim was a runaway. That night, the two royals take Jim and Huck's beds while they stand watch against a storm. The next morning, the Duke gets the
Dauphin to agree to put on a performance of Shakespeare in the next town they cross. Everyone in the town has left for a revival meeting in the woods. The meeting is a lively afiair of several thousand people singing and shouting.

The Dauphin gets up and declares himself a former pirate, now reformed by the meeting, who will return to the Indian Ocean as a missionary. The crowd joyfully takes up a collection, netting the Dauphin eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents, and many kisses from pretty young women.
Meanwhile, the Duke took over the deserted print offce and got nine and a half dollars selling advertisements in the local newspaper. The Duke also prints up a handbill offering a reward for Jim, so that they can travel freely by day and tell whoever asks about Jim that the slave is their captive. The Duke and Dauphin practice the balcony scene from Romeo and
Juliet and the sword fight from Richard III on the raft in Chapter Twenty- one.

The duke also works on his recitation of Hamlet's "To be or not to be," soliloquy, which he has butchered, throwing in lines from other parts of the play, and even Macbeth. But to Huck, the Duke seems to possess a great talent. They visit a one-horse town in Arkansas where lazy young men loiter in the streets, arguing over chewing tobacco. The Duke posts handbills for the performance. Huck witnesses the shooting of a rowdy drunk by a man,
Sherburn, he insulted, in front of the victim's daughter. A crowd gathers around the dying man and then goes off to lynch Sherburn.

The mob charges through the streets in Chapter Twenty-two, sending women and children running away crying in its wake. They go to Sherburn's house, knock down the front fence, but back away as the man meets them on the roof of his front porch, ri e in hand. After a chilling silence,
Sherburn delivers a haughty speech on human nature, saying the average person, and everyone in the mob, is a coward. Southern juries don't convict murderers because they rightly fear being shot in the back, in the dark, by the man's family. Mobs are the most pitiful of all, since no one in them is brave enough in his own right to commit the act without the mass behind him. Sherburn declares no one will lynch him: it is daylight and the
Southern way is to wait until dark and come wearing masks. The mob disperses. Huck then goes to the circus, a "splendid" show, whose clown manages to come up with fantastic one-liners in a remarkably short amount of time. A performer, pretending to be a drunk, forces himself into the ring and tries to ride a horse, apparently hanging on for dear life. The crowd roars its amusement, except for Huck, who cannot bear to watch the poor man's danger. Only twelve people came to the Duke's performance, and they laughed all the way through. So the Duke prints another handbill, this time advertising a performance of "The King's Cameleopard [Girafie] or The
Royal Nonesuch." Bold letters across the bottom read, "Women and Children
Not Admitted."

Chapters 23-25 Summary

The new performance plays to a capacity audience. The Dauphin, naked except for body paint and some "wild" accouterments, has the audience howling with laughter. But the Duke and Dauphin are nearly attacked when the show is ended after this brief performance. To avoid losing face, the audience convinces the rest of the town the show is a smash, and a capacity crowd follows the second night. As the Duke anticipated, the third night's crowd consists of the two previous audiences coming to get their revenge.
The Duke and Huck make a getaway to the raft before the show starts. From the three-night run, they took in four-hundred sixty-five dollars. Jim is shocked that the royals are such "rapscallions." Huck explains that history shows nobles to be rapscallions who constantly lie, steal, and decapitate{describing in the process how Henry VIII started the Boston Tea
Party and wrote the Declaration of Independence. Huck doesn't see the point in telling Jim the two are fakes; besides, they really do seem like the real thing. Jim spends his night watches "moaning and mourning" for his wife and two children, Johnny and Lizabeth. Though "It don't seem natural,"
Huck concludes that Jim loves his family as much as whites love theirs. Jim is torn apart when he hears a thud in the distance, because it reminds him of the time he beat his Lizabeth for not doing what he said, not realizing she had been made deaf-mute by her bout with scarlet fever.

In Chapter Twenty-four, Jim complains about having to wait, frightened, in the boat, tied up (to avoid suspicion) while the others are gone. So the
Duke dresses Jim in a calico stage robe and blue face paint, and posts a sign, "Sick Arab{but harmless when not out of his head." Ashore and dressed up in their newly bought clothes, the Dauphin decides to make a big entrance by steamboat into the next town. The Dauphin calls Huck
"Adolphus," and encounters a talkative young man who tells him about the recently deceased Peter Wilks. Wilks sent for his two brothers from
Shefield, England: Harvey, whom he had not seen since he was five, and
William, who is deaf-mute. He has left all his property to his brothers, though it seems uncertain whether they will ever arrive. The Dauphin gets the young traveler, who is en route to Rio de Janeiro, to tell him everything about the Wilks. In Wilks' town, they ask after Peter Wilks, pretending anguish when told of his death. The Dauphin even makes strange hand signs to the Duke. "It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race," Huck thinks.

A crowd gathers before Wilks' house in Chapter Twenty-five, as the Duke and Dauphin share a tearful meeting with the three Wilks daughters. The entire town then joins in the "blubbering." "I never see anything so disgusting," Huck thinks. Wilks' letter (which he left instead of a will) leaves the house and three thousand dollars to his daughters, and to his brothers, three thousand dollars, plus a tan-yard and seven thousand dollars in real estate. The Duke and Dauphin privately count the money, adding four-hundred fifteen dollars of their own money when the stash comes up short of the letter's six-thousand, for appearances. They then give it all to the Wilks women in a great show before a crowd of townspeople.
Doctor Abner Shackleford, an old friend of the deceased, interrupts to declare them frauds, their accents ridiculously phony. He asks Mary Jane, the oldest Wilks sister, to listen to him as a friend and turn the impostors out. In reply, she hands the Dauphin the six thousand dollars to invest however he sees fit.

Chapters 26-28 Summary

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