volver under his head, and said if anybody come
fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.

We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say
much--only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something
or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and
lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft
and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear
the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just
slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track.

Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a
late feel, and a late smell, too--about a two-o'clock feel, as near as I
could make out--Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be
asleep, and we'd better--

"Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I
knowed what he was thinking about.

"Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says.

I says: "No, sir! Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer."

And Jim--well, Jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. He says:

"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's gone--we's gone sho'! I
ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb
crazy."

Tom whispers and says--"That's WHY we've got to do something. If he
wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't
hire me to get out--now that I've got used to this balloon and over the
scare of being cut loose from the solid ground--if he was in his right
mind. But it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person
that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then
drown us all. We've GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it before he
wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. Come!"

But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we
wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if
he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and
begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and
knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and
watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than
ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the
professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his
face and listen. The