Life on the Mississippi
gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the
fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the
captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great
volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the
chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just
before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the
broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand
stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand;
the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-cocks, the captain lifts
his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning
the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as
there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to
discharge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling
and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the
steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black
smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten more minutes the town is dead
again, and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed
the power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that
offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing; but
the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I first
wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white apron
on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades could
see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood on the
end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because he was
particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,--they were too
heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by one of our
boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last he turned
up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This thing shook
the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy had been
notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted to this
eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing generous
about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to have a
rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he would sit
on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him and envy
him and loathe him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would come home
and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest clothes, so that
nobody could help remembering that he was a steamboatman; and he used
all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, as if he were so used
to them that he forgot common people could not understand them. He would
speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in an easy, natural way that
would make one wish he was dead. And he was always talking about 'St.
Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer casually to occasions when
he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when he was 'passing by the
Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he took a turn on the
brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would go on and lie about
how many towns the size of ours were burned down there that day. Two
or three of the boys had long been persons of consideration among
us because they had been to St. Louis once and had a vague general
knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was over now. They
lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear when the ruthless
'cub'-engineer approached. This fellow had money, too, and hair oil.
Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch chain. He wore
a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever a youth was cordially
admired and hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl could withstand
his charms. He 'cut out' every boy in the village. When his boat blew up
at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us such as we had not
known for months. But when he came home the next week, alive, renowned,
and appeared in church all battered up and bandaged, a shining hero,
stared at and wondered over by everybody, it seemed to us that the
partiality of Providence for an undeserving reptile had reached a point
where it was open to criticism.
This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son
became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud
clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a
boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge,
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even
in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now
some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river--at
least our parents would not let us.
So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again till I was
a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it.
I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like
sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the
pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and
clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time
being, but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a
great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of
these mates and clerks and pay for them.
CHAPTER 5
I Want to be a Cub-pilot
MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death, and
I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go home. I was
in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new career. I had
been reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an
expedition sent out by our government. It was said that the expedition,
owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a part of the country
lying about the head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of
the river. It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to
New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty dollars
left; I would go and complete the exploration of the Amazon. This was
all the thought I gave to the subject. I never was great in matters of
detail. I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called
the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had
the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her' main saloon principally
to myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser
travelers.
When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio,
I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a
traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an
exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes
which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a
glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I
was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had
hardly a trace of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and
wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of the
boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the bank. If
they did not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to attract their
attention, or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me.
And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave other
signs of being mightily bored with traveling.
I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the wind and the sun
could strike me, because I wanted to get the bronzed and weather-beaten
look of an old traveler. Before the second day was half gone I
experienced a joy which filled me with the purest gratitude; for I saw
that the skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck. I
wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now.
We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it. We stuck
hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river, and lay there
four days. I was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being a part
of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the captain and younger
brother to the officers. There is no estimating the pride I took in this
grandeur, or the affection that began to swell and grow in me for those
people. I could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort
of presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire the
least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert
for an opportunity to do him a service to that end. It came at last. The
riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the forecastle,
and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly skipping
out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for somebody to
bring him a capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said: 'Tell me where
it is--I'll fetch it!'
If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor
of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate
was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took
him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again. Then
he said impressively: 'Well, if this don't beat hell!' and turned to his
work with the air of a man who had been confronted with a problem too
abstruse for solution.
I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I did not go
to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody else had finished.
I did not feel so much like a member of the boat's family now as before.
However, my spirits returned, in installments, as we pursued our way
down the river. I was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in
(young) human nature not to admire him. He was huge and muscular, his
face was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue
woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor with
a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When he
was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see and
hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the world
feel it, too. When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged
it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of
profanity thundering after it. I could not help contrasting the way in
which the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way
of doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of you
push that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and he
would roar out: 'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now!
_what_'re you about! Snatch it! SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft
again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to _sleep _over
it! '_Vast _heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear
astern? _Where_'re you going with that barrel! _For'ard_ with it 'fore
I make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-_dashed _split between a tired
mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!'
I wished I could talk like that.
When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off,
I began timidly to make up to the humblest official connected with
the boat--the night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first, but I
presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe; and that softened him.
So he allowed me to sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane deck,