he can make marks on the shirt

"S'pose he CAN'T write -- he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrelhoop?" "Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one; and quicker, too." "PRISONERS don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. They ALWAYS make their pens out of the hardest, toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall. THEY wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it. It ain't regular." "Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" "Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that; and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." "Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan." "That ain't nothing; we can get him some." "Can't nobody READ his plates." "That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn. All HE'S got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't HAVE to be able to read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else." "Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates." "But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?" "Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care whose --" He broke off there, because we heard the breakfasthorn blowing. So we cleared out for the house.