hen we piled on the power again and
rushed away and huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses
broke the tables of stone, and where the children of Israel camped
in the plain and worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as
interesting as could be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I
knowed the village at home.

But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a
standstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled
and warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding
the strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he
didn't know WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't
anything but a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows
it lays a long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you
can't git him to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn't
persuade him. So there he was.

He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could
roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,
but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tom
was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got
the idea and knowed what to do. He says:

"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly
new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at
home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me
and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."

"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,
'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village,
nur Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."

That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:

"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your
compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United
States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike
the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it,
bulge right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida
coast, and in an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the
Mississippi--at the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high
up in the air that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like
a washbowl turned upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling
around every which wa