The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Huck signals Tom that night by meowing like a cat outside his window. They take Huck’s dead cat to the graveyard, where they find a mound of fresh earth—the grave of Hoss Williams. They wonder whether the dead can hear them. Suddenly, they hear voices and assume that ghosts are approaching. However, from their hiding place behind a gravestone, they see three humans draw near. Tom recognizes Muff Potter’s voice. Potter is with “Injun Joe” and Doctor Robinson. They dig up a body, and Potter tells Robinson they want more money.

Robinson protests and hits him. Potter grabs him, and Robinson hits him with a piece of a headstone. Injun Joe stabs the doctor as Tom and Huck flee.

Injun Joe convinces Potter that Potter killed Robinson in a drunken daze after Robinson hit him with the gravestone. Potter blames his drinking. Injun Joe sends him away and says he’ll take care of things. He has Potter’s knife.

Tom and Huck run for as long as they can, finally stopping at the tannery. They agree that they have to keep the secret or Injun Joe will kill them. They take a blood oath of secrecy, writing their vow on a pine shingle, which they then bury. A dog howls, and the boys think it means they’re about to die. Then they see the dog is facing away from them, which means the omen isn’t for their deaths. They hear someone snoring and find Potter passed out nearby. Tom finally makes it home. When he wakes up the next morning, he realizes that it’s later than he thought, and wonders why no one fetched him.

Downstairs, Aunt Polly isn’t angry. Instead, she cries and asks Tom why he wants to break her heart. He has no defense against her tears. He begs for forgiveness and goes to school, vowing to be better for her. At his desk, something presses into his elbow. It’s the andiron knob that he tried to give to Becky, wrapped in paper.

The village learns about Robinson’s murder by noon. There is a rumor that Potter’s knife, which was found at the scene, is the murder weapon. Everyone goes to the graveyard, where Tom sees Huck. Tom sees Injun Joe watching as the sheriff arrives with Potter in tow. Potter denies the murder, but Injun Joe blames him and reminds him what happened.

Potter says he couldn’t stay away from the scene of the crime. Over the next few days, Tom’s conscience torments him. He talks in his sleep, and his hands shake at meals. Aunt Polly thinks it is aftershocks from the horror of the murder.

Tom smuggles small things into the jail for Potter. Sadly, no one is brave enough to punish Injun Joe for grave robbing; he had given two statements about the night of the murder but didn’t mention grave robbing in either of them. Now it is too late to make it part of the official record.

Becky has stopped coming to school, which makes Tom wonder if she has a terminal illness. He becomes depressed and decides to retire from piracy and war as he worries, which concerns his aunt. Aunt Polly, who is susceptible to fad diets and health treatments, tries various treatments on him, including the “water treatment”: Every morning she douses him with a bucket of cold water, scrubs him, then wraps him in a wet sheet. Next, she orders something she calls Painkiller. It is like liquid fire and instantly agitates Tom, making him so excitable that he starts asking for it constantly. In fact, he has actually been dumping it through a crack in the floor. One evening, Peter, the cat, begs for some. Tom gives him a spoonful, and Peter goes wild.

After calming the cat, Aunt Polly sees the teaspoon sticking out from under Tom’s bed. He says he gave it to Peter because Peter didn’t have an aunt who was considering burning his insides out. She softens and realizes that what is a mistreatment to a cat might also be a mistreatment to a human.

Tom gets to school early, which is now habitual. He watches for Becky instead of playing, but she fails to appear. When she finally arrives, he shows off more wildly than ever. However, he hears her dismiss his behavior, and it crushes him.

Tom is forsaken and friendless, which drives him to a decision: “They had forced him to it at last: he would lead a life of crime. There was no choice” (104). He cries when he hears the school bell for the last time.

Thankfully, Joe Harper appears, and they commiserate. Joe’s mother had punished him for drinking cream, and he feels oppressed, just like Tom. He hopes that his mother will be happy that she damned him to death and suffering. Joe wants to be a hermit, but Tom convinces him to become a pirate instead.

They find Huck and go to Jackson’s Island, where they separate as each boy spends the day gathering supplies. When they regroup that night, they are “Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main […] Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper, the Terror of the Seas” (106). They have a skillet, bacon, tobacco, and a stolen ham.

They board a raft and give each other lofty sailing commands as they watch the lights of the town that abandoned them. They build a tent and a fire. After eating, they exclaim that this is the perfect life. When Huck asks Tom what pirates do, Tom says it will be a very good time. Pirate life is nothing but killings, treasure, beautiful women, and fine clothes. However, as they try to sleep, their consciences bother them. They stole the ham, which is against the Bible’s commandments. They decide that they won’t steal again for as long as they are pirates.

Tom wakes and watches bugs before the other boys stir. He hears birds and sees a fox. When Joe and Huck wake, they catch and fry fish. That day, they explore the island and swim each hour, but by night, they are each homesick. They hear a boom in the distance and see that a ferryboat is shooting a cannon over the water. Huck thinks this will make a drowned body rise to the surface and explains that one can perform a similar trick with a loaf of bread. If someone puts quicksilver into a loaf of bread, and says the right words, then the loaf of bread will stop over the spot in the water where someone drowned.

Tom thinks that the cannon is searching for them. The three boys are delighted to be on everyone’s minds, even if it means everyone thinks they have drowned. That night, they are each homesick and quiet. When the others are asleep, Tom heads for the water and goes toward the town.