Some of their expeditions were innocent enough. They often cruised up to
Turtle Island, about two miles above Hannibal, and spent the day
feasting. You could have loaded a car with turtles and their eggs up
there, and there were quantities of mussels and plenty of fish. Fishing
and swimming were their chief pastimes, with general marauding for
adventure. Where the railroad-bridge now ends on the Missouri side was
their favorite swimming-hole--that and along Bear Creek, a secluded
limpid water with special interests of its own. Sometimes at evening
they swam across to Glasscock's Island--the rendezvous of Tom Sawyer's
"Black Avengers" and the hiding-place of Huck and Nigger Jim; then, when
they had frolicked on the sand-bar at the head of the island for an hour
or more, they would swim back in the dusk, a distance of half a mile,
breasting the strong, steady Mississippi current without exhaustion or
fear. They could swim all day, likely enough, those graceless young
scamps. Once--though this was considerably later, when he was sixteen
--Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, and then turned and swam
back again without landing, a distance of at least two miles, as he had
to go. He was seized with a cramp on the return trip. His legs became
useless, and he was obliged to make the remaining distance with his arms.
It was a hardy life they led, and it is not recorded that they ever did
any serious damage, though they narrowly missed it sometimes.

One of their Sunday pastimes was to climb Holliday's Hill and roll down
big stones, to frighten the people who were driving to church. Holliday's
Hill above the road was steep; a stone once started would go plunging and
leaping down and bound across the road with the deadly swiftness of a
twelve-inch shell. The boys would get a stone poised, then wait until
they saw a team approaching, and, calculating the distance, would give it
a start. Dropping down behind the bushes, they would watch the dramatic