Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Huck and Jim continue their journey to Cairo, and, as they approach it, Jim trembles and is feverish with the thought of being so close to his freedom. Huck begins to tremble and feel feverish too, because he acknowledges that he is helping Jim to liberate himself. Huck’s conscience is troubled by this; it tells Huck that he should have told someone that Jim was running away, that he is meanly wronging Miss Watson, who has done nothing to harm him, by helping Jim, her property. Huck feels so mean and miserable that he wishes he were dead.

Restless and fidgety like Huck, Jim talks about what he will do when he is free, how he will work and save money so that he can buy his wife and two children out of slavery, or, if the owners of his wife and children won’t sell, how he would enlist the help of abolitionists to “steal them.” Huck is mortified to hear Jim speak this way, about stealing his children, who belong, Huck thinks, to “a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm.” Huck is sorry to hear Jim lower himself in this way. He resolves to turn Jim in.

Jim spots in the distance what he thinks is Cairo. Huck volunteers to paddle over and see if it is, with the intent of turning Jim in. As he does, a skiff comes along, aboard which are two armed men. They tell Huck that they’re hunting five runaway slaves, and ask Huck if there are any people aboard his raft, and, if so, whether they’re white or black. Huck desperately wants to tell them about Jim, but the words won’t come out of his mouth. At last, Huck lies: he says the man aboard his raft is white. The men say they’ll see for themselves. Huck tells them he wishes they would, because, he lies, the white man on the raft is his father, who’s sick, along with his mother and Mary Ann, also aboard the raft. As the men paddle to investigate, Huck lets on that the illness that afflicts his family is both contagious and dangerous: smallpox. As soon as Huck does so, the men refuse to get anywhere near the raft, apologize to Huck, give him money, and paddle away.

Huck feels bad and low when he returns to the raft, but reasons that he would feel just as bad had he done “right” and turned Jim in. He figures it is easier to do wrong than right, and that the outcome of doing either is the same, and so decides to “always do whichever come handiest at the time.” Jim finds Huck hiding in the river, holding onto the raft. Jim praises Huck for his clever deception of the two men.

Huck and Jim resume their journey, passing two towns, only to find out that neither are Cairo. Huck tells Jim that the two of them must have passed by Cairo when lost in the fog nights earlier. Jim doesn’t want to talk about it and blames the rattlesnake skin for their bad luck, a judgment with which Huck agrees.

Huck and Jim learn they have reached the muddy Missouri River, and figure that Cairo is upstream. They decide to canoe there after resting. But when they return to where they left the raft and canoe, they find that the canoe is missing. They are forced to raft downriver till they reach a place where they can buy a canoe. As they drift, a steamboat comes at them full-speed. Huck supposes that the captain is playing a kind of game of getting as close to the raft as he can without touching it. But the steamboat keeps coming; a bell rings and men yell and cuss at Huck and Jim to get out of the way. At last, the steamboat crashes into the raft, throwing the pair overboard. Huck swims ashore and finds himself before a house, and then barking dogs swarm him. Huck knows better than to move.