The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had
more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly,
and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them
kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at
all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they
might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from heaven. Then at
once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge of sleep but an
intruder came, now, that would not down. It was conscience. They began
to feel a vague fear that they had been doing wrong to run away; and
next they thought of the stolen meat, and then the real torture came.
They tried to argue it away by reminding conscience that they had
purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of times; but conscience was not
to be appeased by such thin plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the
end, that there was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking
sweetmeats was only hooking, while taking bacon and hams and such
valuables was plain simple stealing and there was a command against that
in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in
the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the
crime of stealing. Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously
inconsistent pirates fell peacefully to sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the
deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not
a sound obtruded upon great Nature s meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood
upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire,
and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck
still slept.
Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray
of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going
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