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82 Tom Sawyer Abroad
I was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and things?
But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the center, and sung out:
" Leggo, and drop !"
I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:
" Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard,"
I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a' come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got tuckered out and fell.
And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a* been fifty of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was dead, and some was limping off crippled, and the rest |
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