Life on the Mississippi
didn't that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a bell,
I might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the boat. So
in blind desperation I started such a rattling 'shivaree' down below as
never had astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy. Amidst
the frenzy of the bells the engines began to back and fill in a furious
way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the
woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly
into view on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude.
My distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara,
with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and sweetly took
his tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were a
cigar--we were just in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree,
and the passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these
commands to me ever so gently--
'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.'
The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical
instant, then reluctantly began to back away.
'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard. Come ahead on
it. Point her for the bar.'
I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning. Mr. Bixby came in and
said, with mock simplicity--
'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times
before you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'
I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.
'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watch will tell
you when he wants to wood up.'
I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.
'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then? Did you
ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the
river?'
'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting away from a
bluff reef.'
'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where
you were.'
'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.'
'Just about. Run over it!'
'Do you give it as an order?'
'Yes. Run over it.'
'If I don't, I wish I may die.'
'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just as anxious to
kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before. I impressed my
orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a straight
break for the reef. As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath;
but we slid over it like oil.
'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a _wind _reef.
The wind does that.'
'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever going to
tell them apart?'
'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just naturally
_know _one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or
how you know them apart'
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became a
wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated
passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its
most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.
And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new
story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there
was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could
leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,
thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There
never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest
was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every
reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a
peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions
when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an
_italicized _passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of
the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at
the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that
could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is
the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most
hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read
this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by
the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these
were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of
reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know
every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I
knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.
But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be
restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had
gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful
sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad
expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red
hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,
black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling
upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling
rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was
faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and
radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was
densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was
broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver;
and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single
leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that
was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images,
woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near,
the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing
moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The
world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the
glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether
to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should
have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it,
inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have
wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small
thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef
which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if
it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a
dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is
shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest
is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very
best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead
tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and
then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night
without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the
value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it
could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since
those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely
flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples
above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick
with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever
see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and
comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he
sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his
trade?
CHAPTER 10
Completing My Education
WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have
preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting
as a science. It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not
quite done yet. I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way,
what a wonderful science it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted,
and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run
them; clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels
very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but
piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams like
the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave and change
constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose
sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are for ever dodging and
shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in all nights and
all weathers without the aid of a single light-house or a single buoy;
for there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all this
three or four thousand miles of villainous river.{footnote [True at the
time referred to; not true now (1882).]} I feel justified in enlarging
upon this great science for the reason that I feel sure no one has ever
yet written a paragraph about it who had piloted a steamboat himself,
and so had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme were
hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with the reader; but
since it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take up a considerable
degree of room with it.
When I had learned the name and position of every visible feature of the
river; when I had so mastered its shape that I could shut my eyes and
trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans; when I had learned to read the
face of the water as one would cull the news from the morning paper;
and finally, when I had trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless
array of soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them, I
judged that my education was complete: so I got to tilting my cap to the
side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in my mouth at the wheel. Mr.
Bixby had his eye on these airs. One day he said--
'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?'
'How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile away.'
'Very poor eye--very poor. Take the glass.'
I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell. I suppose that that
bank is about a foot and a half high.'
'Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How high was the bank along
here last trip?'
'I don't know; I never noticed.'
'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.'
'Why?'
'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you.
For one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whether
there's more water or less in the river along here than there was last
trip.'
'The leads tell me that.' I rather thought I had the advantage of him
there.
'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so, and then
you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last
trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that signify?'
'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.'
'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?'
'Rising.'
'No it ain't.'
'I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floating down the
stream.'
'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while
after the river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you about this.
Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do
you see this narrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the