I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.
We had to go up a mile before we struck comfort-able weather where it was breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and says:
"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are.
We're in the Great Sahara, as sure as guns!"
He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:
"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In Eng-land or in Scotland?"
"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."
Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't more than half be-lieve it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far away for us to have traveled.
But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land some-wheres, if he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:
"These clocks. They're chronometers. You al-ways read about them in sea voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping St.
Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half past 11 A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grin-nage clock was six hours fast; but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of set-ting by the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out -- more than four hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted right -- which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering -- wandering 'way down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this map.
You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up, and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa; and it's just bully."
Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:
"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's. hain't seen no niggers yit."
"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert.
What is that, 'way off yonder? Gimme a glass."
He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.
"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longi-tude, and we can drop down and look at its number, and --"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunk-head as you. Did you s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"
"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well, and here they are, and you can see for yourself."
"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the GROUND."
"Tom, do you know that to be so?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that map."
He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and sing out:
"Camels! -- Camels!"
So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was disappointed, and says:
"Camels your granny; they're spiders."
"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away? Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long."
"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and ain't going to till I see it and know it."
"All right," he says, and give the command:
"Lower away."
