so when
the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in
the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his
way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt
a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over.
He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner
again, not for a salary.

Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The
shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would
get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the
pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the
grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust,
and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We reckoned we was all going
to die, but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see; and
Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now,
at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The
old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to
come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because
there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in
the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis
ones it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose.
So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.

"What's them?" I says.

"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one
way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that
gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to
light out of the Tooleries a servant-girl done it. It's a very good way,
and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual
for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in,
and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too."

"But looky here, Tom, what do we want to WARN anybody for that
something's up? Let them find it out for themselves--it's their
lookout."

"Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted
from the very start--left us to do EVERYTHING. They're so confiding and
mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. So if we don't
GIVE them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us,
and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off
perfec