Life on the Mississippi
wouldn't man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled
up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the dead men
be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that got ashore
would come back; and he was right.
'After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be
trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A
good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on
other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore.
Some said, let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.
'This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched
together forrard watching for the bar'l, when, lo and behold you, here
she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her
old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain, and
says:--
'“Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'l
to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and _you _don't; well, then,
how's the best way to stop it? Burn it up,--that's the way. I'm going
to fetch it aboard,” he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he
went.
'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread
to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head,
and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick
Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so.
'“Yes,” he says, a-leaning over it, “yes, it is my own lamented darling,
my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,” says he,--for he could
curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a
mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes,
he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he
choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--which was
prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l, before
his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and
went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l had chased
him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men
was killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that. He
said if the men would stand it one more night,--and was a-going on like
that,--but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat to
take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a
sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and shedding
tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old suffering soul,
nor Charles William neither.'
'_Who _was shedding tears?' says Bob; 'was it Allbright or the baby?'
'Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead. Been
dead three years--how could it cry?'
'Well, never mind how it could cry--how could it _keep _all that time?'
says Davy. 'You answer me that.'
'I don't know how it done it,' says Ed. 'It done it though--that's all I
know about it.'
'Say--what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity.
'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.'
'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one.
'Did it have its hair parted?' says another.
'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called
Bill.
'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy.
'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.'
says Davy.
'Him? O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.
'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? You look
bad--don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity.
'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that
bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole--do--and we'll all
believe you.'
'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us. I can
swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.'
Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped
out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they
yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear
them a mile.
'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity;
and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles
where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so
he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back.
'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys--there's a snake here as
big as a cow!'
So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.
'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one.
'Who are you?' says another.
'What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.
'Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.'
I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says--
'A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!'
'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue
all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!'
'Good, that 's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.'
When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,
the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that
sort of worked on Davy, and he says--
''Vast there! He 's nothing but a cub. 'I'll paint the man that tetches
him!'
So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and
Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.
'Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here,' says Davy.
'Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you
been aboard here?'
'Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' says I.
'How did you get dry so quick?'
'I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly.'
'Oh, you are, are you. What's your name?'
I warn't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say, so I just
says--
'Charles William Allbright, sir.'
Then they roared--the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,
because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.
When they got done laughing, Davy says--
'It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed this much
in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l, you
know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody'll
hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong. What _is_ your name?'
'Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.'
'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?'
'From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her.
Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off
here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you
to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him--'
'Oh, come!'
'Yes, sir; it's as true as the world; Pap he says--'
'Oh, your grandmother!'
They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and
stopped me.
'Now, looky-here,' says Davy; 'you're scared, and so you talk wild.
Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?'
'Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But I
warn't born in her. It's our first trip.'
'Now you're talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To steal?'
'No, sir, I didn't.--It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys
does that.'
'Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?'
'Sometimes they drive the boys off.'
'So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this time,
will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?'
''Deed I will, boss. You try me.'
'All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore. Overboard with
you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way.--Blast
it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!'
I didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore.
When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around
the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home
again.
The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has
furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I
desire to offer in this place.
I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times
of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination--the
marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has
been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.
CHAPTER 4
The Boys' Ambition
WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village {footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of
the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus
came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in
its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious
with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not
only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I
can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white
town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water
Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against
the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and
a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in
watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles
scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow
of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to
listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its
mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the
other side; the 'point' above the town, and the 'point' below, bounding
the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very
still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke
appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry,
'S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard
stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every
house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling
the dead town is alive and moving.
Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common
center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon
the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time. And
the boat _is_ rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharp and
trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded
device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, a glass
and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the 'texas' deck behind them; the
paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the
boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck
are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag