- Huck and Jim raft away down the river, with Missouri on one side and Illinois on the other.
- They travel at night, tying the raft to the shore and covering it up during the day.
- Some nights, Huck lands at a nearby town to buy food or occasionally steal a chicken. His father, he says, told him that you might as well steal a chicken whenever you can, because if you don't want it yourself, you can give it away.
- More good moral lessons from Pap: stealing is really "borrowing," as long as you "intended" on giving it "back" sometime.
- The widow, on the other hand, correctly identifies this as "stealing."
- Jim offers a compromise: they should pick three things they won't steal anymore, and everything else will be fine.
- Great! Now that's settled.
- A little later, the pair comes across a wrecked steamship in the middle of a thunderstorm.
- Huck wants to land and plunder, but Jim has a bad feeling. What if there are watchmen on board?
- Huck insists. Tom Sawyer wouldn't be scared of a steamboat, he says, so why should they be?
- Okay, that's evidently a convincing argument. The two both amble on board, only to overhear three robbers, two of them preparing to kill the third man.
- Eek.
- Jim skitters off to the raft, but Huck inches closer to the voices to see what's going on.
- We get some more info: Jake Packard is the man with the gun; he's trying to convince his buddy Bill to kill the third man, Jim Turner. It seems Jake is afraid Jim will "turn state's evidence," i.e., rat them out.
- Jake has a better idea: instead of shooting Bill, they should plunder the rest of the steamboat and then wait for him to drown when the boat goes under.
- You know, because this way, they'll have clean consciences.
- Huck hustles out to Jim and tells him they should hurry and get the sheriff.
- Great! Unfortunately, the raft has broken loose in the storm and gone off down the river.
- Uh-oh.