Life On The Mississippi, Part 2. - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
BY MARK TWAIN
Part 2.
Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience
WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other
delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making
the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get
acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the
boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever
for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came. It
was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,
and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.{footnote [1.
'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]}
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be likely
to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the
other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not
suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could
afford to wait for a ship. Therefore it followed that I must contrive a
new career. The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis. I planned a
siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he
surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small
enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had
really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not
have had the courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do
was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that
could be much of a trick, since it was so wide.
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it
was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, 'straightened her
up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the
Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her; shave those steamships as close
as you'd peel an apple.' I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered
up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the side off every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath
and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such
peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide
margin of safety intervening between the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and
within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was
going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage
of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he,
'This is Six-Mile Point.' I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, 'This
is Nine-Mile Point.' Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.' They
were all about level with the water's edge; they all looked about alike
to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would
change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say: 'The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At
midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman
said--
'Come! turn out!'
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;
so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon
the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed.
I said:--
'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the
night for. Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.'
The watchman said--
'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.'
The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter
from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman! an't the new cub turned
out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send
for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.'
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute
later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on
and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here
was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night
to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me
at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had
imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this
new phase of it.
It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.
The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star
and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on
either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed
wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:--
'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.'
The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, I wish you joy of
your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr. Jones's
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never WILL find it as
long as you live.
Mr. Bixby said to the mate:--
'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?'
'Upper.'
'I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage: It's
no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with that.'
'All right, sir. If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it, I
reckon.'
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation
on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I
dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many
short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I
desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass
enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night
when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I
held in. I used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing--
'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:--
'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
'Don't KNOW?'
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.
'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the
NEXT point?'
Once more I didn't know.
'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I
told you.'
I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.
'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'
'I--I--don't know.'
'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO
you know?'
'I--I--nothing, for certain.'
'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.'
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from
one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would
boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?'
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation
provoked me to say:--
'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who
would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such
an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and
farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted
his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the
window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and
not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said
to me in the gentlest way--
'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a
pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know
it just like A B C.'
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged
long. I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless
Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few
strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was
as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was
not entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck--
'What's this, sir?'
'Jones's plantation.'
I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it
isn't. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the
engine bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a torch
glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the
bank said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we
were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply
awhile, and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the finding of that
plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't
happen again in a hundred years.' And I fully believed it was an
accident, too.
By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had
learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and
before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-
work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the
names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the
information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my
head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river
set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and
night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had
slept since the voyage began.
My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I
packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I
stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed
perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and
aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the
little 'Paul Jones' a large craft. There were other differences, too.
The 'Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap,
cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to
have a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit,
to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores'
instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on
the floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my
head, costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs
for the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' to bring
up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this
was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once more to believe
that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we
were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself
with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I
looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a
splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on
every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed
chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and
the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The
boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as
spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there
was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down
there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaring
from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers! This
was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines--but enough of this. I had
never felt so fine before. And when I found that the regiment of natty
servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete.
Chapter 7 A Daring Deed
WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.
Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could
make neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was turned around.
I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see
how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was
plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river BOTH WAYS.
The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'
What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St.
Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi
changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find it
necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats
were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.
A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who
seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their
being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes
of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's
sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of them
constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever
really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)
it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board. In
time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats
that had an established reputation for setting good tables. All visiting
pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or
summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or
assist the boat's pilots in any way they could. They were likewise
welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together,
and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are
always interesting. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on
earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride
of kings.
We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. There
were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our great
pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate
shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.
They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity
proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The
others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall
felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.
I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say
torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel
when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest
that stood nearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty
much all the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the
scant water. I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the
hope all out of me. One visitor said to another--
'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'
'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys on the
"Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards above the wood pile on
the false point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised
the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar
till I got well abreast the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then
got my stern on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the
point, and came through a-booming--nine and a half.'
'Pretty square crossing, an't it?'
'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.'
Another pilot spoke up and said--
'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from
the false point--mark twain--raised the second reef abreast the big snag
in the bend, and had quarter less twain.'
One of the gorgeous ones remarked--
'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good deal
of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.'
There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the
boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking.
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my ears
hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and
islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm
personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood
and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve
hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these
things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that
can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting
business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.'
At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal to land),
and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in the forward end of the
texas, and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said--
'We will lay up here all night, captain.'
'Very well, sir.'
That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night. It
seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased, without
asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and went
immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and
experiences. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of
meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had
looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no,
it reveled all through my head till sunrise again, a frantic and
tireless nightmare.
Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming
along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of
the river' (as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should
overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently
grounded the boat, and we lost so much time in getting her off that it
was plain that darkness would overtake us a good long way above the
mouth. This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of our
visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for their return, no
matter how long that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good
deal. Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of
darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was
different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current pushing
behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at night in low
water.
There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get through the
intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we could
venture the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.
But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night. So there was a
deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day, and a constant
ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal
subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad
crossing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the
burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me,
and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such an
awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five
minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over
again. We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ran such
portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream, because of
his greater familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot house
constantly.
An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped
aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand
and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a
doomful sigh--
'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.' All the watches
closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered something about its
being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour
sooner!' and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.
Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The
sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed
from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob and
had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the
knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were
exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly
the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or
two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became
oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from
the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause, and one more note
was struck. The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck--
'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!'
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were
gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.
'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Half
twain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--'
Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far
below in the engine room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to
whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on--and
it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was
watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was
calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a
spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible
marks--for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he
would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk,
one caught a coherent sentence now and then--such as--
'There; she's over the first reef all right!'
After a pause, another subdued voice--
'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'
'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'
Somebody else muttered--
'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!'
Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the
current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the
stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work;
it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than
that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island. We were
closing right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so
imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the
strongest impulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel. But
still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the
pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.