Jim´s Betrayed

Donde Huck encuentra que el duque y el rey vendieron a Jim. Del original ingles “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, de Mark Twain

"Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!"

But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam.  Jim was gone!  I set up a shout—and then another—and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no use—old Jim was gone.  Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it. But I couldn't set still long.  Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:

"Yes."

"Whereabouts?" says I.

"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here.  He's a runaway nigger, and they've got him.  Was you looking for him?"

"You bet I ain't!  I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out—and told me to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it.  Been there ever since; afeard to come out."

"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. He run off f'm down South, som'ers."

"It's a good job they got him."

"Well, I RECKON!  There's two hunderd dollars reward on him.  It's like picking up money out'n the road."

"Yes, it is—and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him FIRST. Who nailed him?"

"It was an old fellow—a stranger—and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait.  Think o' that, now!  You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year."

"That's me, every time," says I.  "But maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap.  Maybe there's something ain't straight about it."

"But it IS, though—straight as a string.  I see the pamphlet myself.  It tells all about him, to a dot—paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS.  No-sirree-BOB, they ain't no trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you.  Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?"

I didn't have none, so he left.  I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think.  But I couldn't come to nothing.  I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.  After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was.  But I soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of ME!  It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. 

Vocabulario

wigwam: choza

whooping: gritando

screeching: chillando

hollered: gritaba

busted up: destruido

Tópicos para discutir

La conciencia es una carga muy pesada

Huck sabe que hizo mal, que tendría que cambiar sus acciones. En su interior sabe que diciendo la verdad su conciencia se aliviaría.

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