Nascent Drama

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

"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."

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

"A couple of case-knives."

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Yes."

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

"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?"

 

[The Dork Lord]

"I don't know."

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Well, guess."

 

[The Dork Lord]

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

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Thirty-seven year -- and he come out in China. That's the kind. I wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock."

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Jim don't know nobody in China."

 

[The Dork Lord]

"What's that got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to the main point?"

 

[The Dork Lord]

"All right -- I don't care where he comes out, so he comes out; and Jim don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anyway -- Jim's too old to be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last."

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Yes he will last, too. You don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven years to dig out through a dirt foundation, do you?"

 

[The Dork Lord]

"How long will it take, Tom?"

 

[The Dork Lord]

"Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He'll hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, or something like that. So we can't resk being as long digging him out as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can let on, to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon that 'll be the best way."