ed to know. I got the
subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said
when a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the
people made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of
them ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up
high. Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said
so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:

"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't
know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make
it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."

He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said
it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom
Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if
we pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a
traveler now.

Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land,
and we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the
glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing
but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still
there warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but
reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but
went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains
in the dark.

It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed up,
because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land,
and didn't stand no regular watch.

Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked
over, and there was the land sure enough--land all around, as far as you
could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd
been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns,
and Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a
dead ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea
and rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that
way.

We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and
hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it,
nor any other settlement--nor any sign of a lake or a river, either.
Tom was clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought
England looked like America, and always had that idea