Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter Seven Summary

Huck falls asleep holding the gun and is woken by his father; he lies and says he was guarding against a robber in the night. Pap, in the midst of one extraordinary hangover, doesn’t remember the night before anyway, so it’s all good.
Outside, Huck sees the river rising and knows it’s June. He implies that he’s starting to miss town.
As luck would have it, he finds a drift-canoe coming down the river (that is, a canoe with no one in it, for those of you who don’t speak Huck).
He hides it where his father won’t find it and plans to run away in it later.
Back at home, Pap gathers up some lumber and takes it to town to sell for money (read: whiskey). While he’s gone, Huck gathers up supplies and leaves through the hole he sawed in the back of the cabin.
Then he does what every normal boy dreams about at least once in his childhood: he fakes his own death. Huck beats down the door to the cabin and spreads pig’s blood everywhere to make the cabin look like a robbery/murder-scene.
Huck loads up the canoe and paddles out in the river in the pitch-black darkness.
In the nail-biting scene that follows, Huck has to lie down still in his canoe as his father paddles by right next to him – returning from town in his own skiff. Because of the darkness and possibly his stupidity, Pap is oblivious to the empty canoe less than six inches from his path.
Once he is out of danger’s way, Huck chills out in his canoe, smokes a pipe, and looks at the stars. It’s all very picturesque and beautiful as he listens to the men on a nearby ferry conversing.
He then paddles out to the uninhabited Jackson’s Island, an all-inclusive resort destination in the middle of the river.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Six