Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter Fifteen Summary
Huck and Jim are headed to Cairo, "at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in"; that’s where they can sell the raft and take a steamboat to Ohio – one of the free states. They figure it will take about three more days to get there.
When a heavy fog rolls in, Huck goes ahead in the canoe and gets separated from Jim and the raft.
Jim whoops to Huck, but in the fog and confusion he still can’t make his way back. So he panics for a bit and then just goes to sleep.
The next day the fog has lifted and Huck finds Jim, who has also been sleeping. He lies down on the raft and wakes Jim, pretending that he’s been there asleep the whole night and that the fog incident was all a dream.
Jim is all, "Argh, I had the strangest dream!" and Huck is all, "Really?"
So Jim narrates the story, only he "paint[s] it up considerable" with exaggerations.
Then he sees the leaves and smashed up oar on the raft, and realizes that in fact the incident was not a dream.
Huck is still in stitches, but Jim is genuinely hurt. He says he thought Huck had died in the fog and was just miserable over the whole thing. He sulks off.
Huck realizes his trick was a mean one. He works himself up to go apologize, which he finds particularly difficult to do because Jim is black. Still, he says, he’s glad he did.