Dog Heart Murmur Life Expectancy

life on the mississippi by mark twain chapter 1 the river and its history the mississippi is well worth reading about.it is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all waysremarkable. considering the

Dog Heart Murmur Life Expectancy, missouri its main branch, it is the longestriver in the world--four thousand three hundred miles. it seems safeto say that it is also the crookedest river in the world, since in onepart of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred miles to coverthe same ground that the

crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five.it discharges three times as much water as the st. lawrence, twenty-fivetimes as much as the rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eighttimes as much as the thames. no other river has so vast a drainage-basin:it draws its water supply from twenty-eight states and territories;from delaware, on the atlantic seaboard, and from all the countrybetween that and idaho on the pacific slope--a spread of forty-fivedegrees of longitude. the mississippi receives and carries to the gulfwater from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats,and from some

hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels.the area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combinedareas of england, wales, scotland, ireland, france, spain, portugal,germany, austria, italy, and turkey; and almost all this wide regionis fertile; the mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so. it is a remarkable river in this: that insteadof widening toward its mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower anddeeper. from the junction of the ohio to a point half way down to thesea, the width averages a mile in high water: thence to the sea thewidth steadily diminishes,

until, at the 'passes,' above the mouth, itis but little over half a mile. at the junction of the ohio the mississippi'sdepth is eighty-seven feet; the depth increases gradually,reaching one hundred and twenty-nine just above the mouth. the difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--notin the upper, but in the lower river. the rise is tolerablyuniform down to natchez (three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--aboutfifty feet. but at bayou la fourche the river rises onlytwenty-four feet; at new orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouthonly two and one half.

an article in the new orleans 'times-democrat,'based upon reports of able engineers, states that the river annuallyempties four hundred and six million tons of mud into the gulf of mexico--whichbrings to mind captain marryat's rude name for the mississippi--'thegreat sewer.' this mud, solidified, would make a mass a milesquare and two hundred and forty-one feet high. the mud deposit gradually extends the land--butonly gradually; it has extended it not quite a third of a mile inthe two hundred years which have elapsed since the river took its placein history. the belief of

the scientific people is, that the mouth usedto be at baton rouge, where the hills cease, and that the two hundredmiles of land between there and the gulf was built by the river.this gives us the age of that piece of country, without any trouble at all--onehundred and twenty thousand years. yet it is much the youthfullestbatch of country that lies around there anywhere. the mississippi is remarkable in still anotherway--its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrownecks of land, and thus straightening and shortening itself. morethan once it has shortened

itself thirty miles at a single jump! thesecut-offs have had curious effects: they have thrown several river townsout into the rural districts, and built up sand bars and forestsin front of them. the town of delta used to be three miles below vicksburg:a recent cutoff has radically changed the position, and deltais now two miles above vicksburg. both of these river towns have been retiredto the country by that cut-off. a cut-off plays havoc with boundarylines and jurisdictions: for instance, a man is living in the stateof mississippi to-day, a

cut-off occurs to-night, and to-morrow theman finds himself and his land over on the other side of the river,within the boundaries and subject to the laws of the state of louisiana!such a thing, happening in the upper river in the old times, couldhave transferred a slave from missouri to illinois and made a free man ofhim. the mississippi does not alter its localityby cut-offs alone: it is always changing its habitat bodily--is alwaysmoving bodily sidewise. at hard times, la., the river is two mileswest of the region it used to occupy. as a result, the original site ofthat settlement is not now in

louisiana at all, but on the other side ofthe river, in the state of mississippi. nearly the whole of that onethousand three hundred miles of old mississippi river which la salle floateddown in his canoes, two hundred years ago, is good solid dry groundnow. the river lies to the right of it, in places, and to the left ofit in other places. although the mississippi's mud builds landbut slowly, down at the mouth, where the gulfs billows interfere withits work, it builds fast enough in better protected regions higherup: for instance, prophet's island contained one thousand five hundredacres of land thirty years

ago; since then the river has added sevenhundred acres to it. but enough of these examples of the mightystream's eccentricities for the present--i will give a few more of themfurther along in the book. let us drop the mississippi's physical history,and say a word about its historical history--so to speak. we can glancebriefly at its slumbrous first epoch in a couple of short chapters;at its second and wider-awake epoch in a couple more; at its flushest andwidest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding chapters; and then talk aboutits comparatively tranquil present epoch in what shall be left of thebook.

the world and the books are so accustomedto use, and over-use, the word 'new' in connection with our country, thatwe early get and permanently retain the impression that there is nothingold about it. we do of course know that there are several comparativelyold dates in american history, but the mere figures convey to ourminds no just idea, no distinct realization, of the stretch of timewhich they represent. to say that de soto, the first white man whoever saw the mississippi river, saw it in 1542, is a remark which statesa fact without interpreting it: it is something like givingthe dimensions of a sunset

by astronomical measurements, and cataloguingthe colors by their scientific names;--as a result, you get thebald fact of the sunset, but you don't see the sunset. it would have beenbetter to paint a picture of it. the date 1542, standing by itself, means littleor nothing to us; but when one groups a few neighboring historicaldates and facts around it, he adds perspective and color, and then realizesthat this is one of the american dates which is quite respectablefor age. for instance, when the mississippi was firstseen by a white man, less

than a quarter of a century had elapsed sincefrancis i.'s defeat at pavia; the death of raphael; the death ofbayard, sans peur et sans reproche; the driving out of the knights-hospitallersfrom rhodes by the turks; and the placarding of the ninety-fivepropositions,--the act which began the reformation. when de sototook his glimpse of the river, ignatius loyola was an obscure name; the orderof the jesuits was not yet a year old; michael angelo's paint wasnot yet dry on the last judgment in the sistine chapel; mary queenof scots was not yet born, but would be before the year closed. catherinede medici was a child;

elizabeth of england was not yet in her teens;calvin, benvenuto cellini, and the emperor charles v. were atthe top of their fame, and each was manufacturing history after his ownpeculiar fashion; margaret of navarre was writing the 'heptameron' andsome religious books,--the first survives, the others are forgotten,wit and indelicacy being sometimes better literature preservers thanholiness; lax court morals and the absurd chivalry business were in fullfeather, and the joust and the tournament were the frequent pastime oftitled fine gentlemen who could fight better than they could spell,while religion was the passion

of their ladies, and classifying their offspringinto children of full rank and children by brevet their pastime.in fact, all around, religion was in a peculiarly blooming condition: thecouncil of trent was being called; the spanish inquisition was roasting,and racking, and burning, with a free hand; elsewhere on the continentthe nations were being persuaded to holy living by the sword andfire; in england, henry viii. had suppressed the monasteries, burnt fisherand another bishop or two, and was getting his english reformationand his harem effectively started. when de soto stood on the banks ofthe mississippi, it was

still two years before luther's death; elevenyears before the burning of servetus; thirty years before the st. bartholomewslaughter; rabelais was not yet published; 'don quixote' was notyet written; shakespeare was not yet born; a hundred long years muststill elapse before englishmen would hear the name of oliver cromwell. unquestionably the discovery of the mississippiis a datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shinynewness of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspectof rustiness and antiquity. de soto merely glimpsed the river, then diedand was buried in it by his

priests and soldiers. one would expect thepriests and the soldiers to multiply the river's dimensions by ten--thespanish custom of the day--and thus move other adventurers to goat once and explore it. on the contrary, their narratives when they reachedhome, did not excite that amount of curiosity. the mississippiwas left unvisited by whites during a term of years which seems incrediblein our energetic days. one may 'sense' the interval to his mind, aftera fashion, by dividing it up in this way: after de soto glimpsed theriver, a fraction short of a quarter of a century elapsed, and then shakespearewas born; lived a

trifle more than half a century, then died;and when he had been in his grave considerably more than half a century,the second white man saw the mississippi. in our day we don't allowa hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a marvel. if somebodyshould discover a creek in the county next to the one that the northpole is in, europe and america would start fifteen costly expeditionsthither: one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to huntfor each other. for more than a hundred and fifty years therehad been white settlements on our atlantic coasts. these people werein intimate communication

with the indians: in the south the spaniardswere robbing, slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up,the english were trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration,and throwing in civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe;' and in canadathe french were schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying amongthem, and drawing whole populations of them at a time to quebec, andlater to montreal, to buy furs of them. necessarily, then, these variousclusters of whites must have heard of the great river of the far west;and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,--so vaguely and indefinitely,that its course,

proportions, and locality were hardly evenguessable. the mere mysteriousness of the matter ought to havefired curiosity and compelled exploration; but this did not occur. apparentlynobody happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody wascurious about it; so, for a century and a half the mississippi remainedout of the market and undisturbed. when de soto found it, he wasnot hunting for a river, and had no present occasion for one; consequentlyhe did not value it or even take any particular notice of it. but at last la salle the frenchman conceivedthe idea of seeking out

that river and exploring it. it always happensthat when a man seizes upon a neglected and important idea, peopleinflamed with the same notion crop up all around. it happened soin this instance. naturally the question suggests itself, whydid these people want the river now when nobody had wanted it in thefive preceding generations? apparently it was because at this late daythey thought they had discovered a way to make it useful; for ithad come to be believed that the mississippi emptied into the gulfof california, and therefore afforded a short cut from canada to china.previously the supposition

had been that it emptied into the atlantic,or sea of virginia. chapter 2 the river and its explorers la salle himself sued for certain high privileges,and they were graciously accorded him by louis xiv of inflatedmemory. chief among them was the privilege to explore, far andwide, and build forts, and stake out continents, and hand the same overto the king, and pay the expenses himself; receiving, in return, somelittle advantages of one sort or another; among them the monopoly ofbuffalo hides. he spent several years and about all of his money,in making perilous and painful

trips between montreal and a fort which hehad built on the illinois, before he at last succeeded in getting hisexpedition in such a shape that he could strike for the mississippi. and meantime other parties had had betterfortune. in 1673 joliet the merchant, and marquette the priest, crossedthe country and reached the banks of the mississippi. they went by wayof the great lakes; and from green bay, in canoes, by way of fox riverand the wisconsin. marquette had solemnly contracted, on the feast of theimmaculate conception, that if the virgin would permit him to discoverthe great river, he would

name it conception, in her honor. he kepthis word. in that day, all explorers traveled with an outfit of priests.de soto had twenty-four with him. la salle had several, also. theexpeditions were often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they alwayshad the furniture and other requisites for the mass; they were alwaysprepared, as one of the quaint chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explainhell to the savages.' on the 17th of june, 1673, the canoes of jolietand marquette and their five subordinates reached the junctionof the wisconsin with the mississippi. mr. parkman says: 'before thema wide and rapid current

coursed athwart their way, by the foot oflofty heights wrapped thick in forests.' he continues: 'turning southward,they paddled down the stream, through a solitude unrelieved by thefaintest trace of man.' a big cat-fish collided with marquette's canoe,and startled him; and reasonably enough, for he had been warnedby the indians that he was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one,for the river contained a demon 'whose roar could be heard at a greatdistance, and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.'i have seen a mississippi catfish that was more than six feet long,and weighed two hundred and

fifty pounds; and if marquette's fish wasthe fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river's roaringdemon was come. 'at length the buffalo began to appear, grazingin herds on the great prairies which then bordered the river; andmarquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls asthey stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blindedthem.' the voyagers moved cautiously: 'landed atnight and made a fire to cook their evening meal; then extinguished it,embarked again, paddled some way farther, and anchored in the stream, keepinga man on the watch till

morning.' they did this day after day and night afternight; and at the end of two weeks they had not seen a human being. theriver was an awful solitude, then. and it is now, over most of its stretch. but at the close of the fortnight they oneday came upon the footprints of men in the mud of the western bank--a robinsoncrusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet,when one stumbles on it in print. they had been warned that the riverindians were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyedall comers without waiting

for provocation; but no matter, joliet andmarquette struck into the country to hunt up the proprietors of thetracks. they found them, by and by, and were hospitably received and welltreated--if to be received by an indian chief who has taken off his lastrag in order to appear at his level best is to be received hospitably;and if to be treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game,including dog, and have these things forked into one's mouth by theungloved fingers of indians is to be well treated. in the morning thechief and six hundred of his tribesmen escorted the frenchmen to the riverand bade them a friendly

farewell. on the rocks above the present city of altonthey found some rude and fantastic indian paintings, which they describe.a short distance below 'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiouslyathwart the calm blue current of the mississippi, boiling and surging andsweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees.' this was themouth of the missouri, 'that savage river,' which 'descending from itsmad career through a vast unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floodsinto the bosom of its gentle sister.'

by and by they passed the mouth of the ohio;they passed cane-brakes; they fought mosquitoes; they floated along,day after day, through the deep silence and loneliness of the river,drowsing in the scant shade of makeshift awnings, and broiling with theheat; they encountered and exchanged civilities with another party ofindians; and at last they reached the mouth of the arkansas (abouta month out from their starting-point), where a tribe of war-whoopingsavages swarmed out to meet and murder them; but they appealed tothe virgin for help; so in place of a fight there was a feast, and plentyof pleasant palaver and

fol-de-rol. they had proved to their satisfaction, thatthe mississippi did not empty into the gulf of california, or intothe atlantic. they believed it emptied into the gulf of mexico. they turnedback, now, and carried their great news to canada. but belief is not proof. it was reserved forla salle to furnish the proof. he was provokingly delayed, by onemisfortune after another, but at last got his expedition under way at theend of the year 1681. in the dead of winter he and henri de tonty, sonof lorenzo tonty, who invented

the tontine, his lieutenant, started downthe illinois, with a following of eighteen indians brought fromnew england, and twenty-three frenchmen. they moved in procession down thesurface of the frozen river, on foot, and dragging their canoesafter them on sledges. at peoria lake they struck open water, andpaddled thence to the mississippi and turned their prows southward.they plowed through the fields of floating ice, past the mouth ofthe missouri; past the mouth of the ohio, by-and-by; 'and, gliding by thewastes of bordering swamp, landed on the 24th of february near the thirdchickasaw bluffs,' where

they halted and built fort prudhomme. 'again,' says mr. parkman, 'they embarked;and with every stage of their adventurous progress, the mystery of thisvast new world was more and more unveiled. more and more they enteredthe realms of spring. the hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, thetender foliage, the opening flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.' day by day they floated down the great bends,in the shadow of the dense forests, and in time arrived at the mouthof the arkansas. first, they were greeted by the natives of this localityas marquette had before

been greeted by them--with the booming ofthe war drum and the flourish of arms. the virgin composed the difficultyin marquette's case; the pipe of peace did the same office for la salle.the white man and the red man struck hands and entertained eachother during three days. then, to the admiration of the savages, la salleset up a cross with the arms of france on it, and took possessionof the whole country for the king--the cool fashion of the time--whilethe priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn. the priest explainedthe mysteries of the faith 'by signs,' for the saving of the savages;thus compensating them with

possible possessions in heaven for the certainones on earth which they had just been robbed of. and also, by signs,la salle drew from these simple children of the forest acknowledgmentsof fealty to louis the putrid, over the water. nobody smiled at thesecolossal ironies. these performances took place on the siteof the future town of napoleon, arkansas, and there the first confiscation-crosswas raised on the banks of the great river. marquette'sand joliet's voyage of discovery ended at the same spot--the siteof the future town of napoleon. when de soto took his fleeting glimpseof the river, away back

in the dim early days, he took it from thatsame spot--the site of the future town of napoleon, arkansas. therefore,three out of the four memorable events connected with the discoveryand exploration of the mighty river, occurred, by accident, in oneand the same place. it is a most curious distinction, when one comes tolook at it and think about it. france stole that vast country on thatspot, the future napoleon; and by and by napoleon himself was to givethe country back again!--make restitution, not to the owners, but to theirwhite american heirs. the voyagers journeyed on, touching here andthere; 'passed the sites,

since become historic, of vicksburg and grandgulf,' and visited an imposing indian monarch in the teche country,whose capital city was a substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixedwith straw--better houses than many that exist there now. the chiefs housecontained an audience room forty feet square; and there he received tontyin state, surrounded by sixty old men clothed in white cloaks. therewas a temple in the town, with a mud wall about it ornamented with skullsof enemies sacrificed to the sun. the voyagers visited the natchez indians,near the site of the

present city of that name, where they founda 'religious and political despotism, a privileged class descended fromthe sun, a temple and a sacred fire.' it must have been like gettinghome again; it was home with an advantage, in fact, for it lackedlouis xiv. a few more days swept swiftly by, and la sallestood in the shadow of his confiscating cross, at the meeting ofthe waters from delaware, and from itaska, and from the mountain rangesclose upon the pacific, with the waters of the gulf of mexico, histask finished, his prodigy achieved. mr. parkman, in closing his fascinatingnarrative, thus sums

up: 'on that day, the realm of france receivedon parchment a stupendous accession. the fertile plains of texas; thevast basin of the mississippi, from its frozen northern springsto the sultry borders of the gulf; from the woody ridges of the alleghaniesto the bare peaks of the rocky mountains--a region of savannasand forests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy prairies, watered by athousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneaththe scepter of the sultan of versailles; and all by virtue of a feeblehuman voice, inaudible at half

a mile.' chapter 3 frescoes from the past apparently the river was ready for business,now. but no, the distribution of a population along its bankswas as calm and deliberate and time-devouring a process as the discoveryand exploration had been. seventy years elapsed, after the exploration,before the river's borders had a white population worth considering;and nearly fifty more before the river had a commerce. between la salle'sopening of the river and the time when it may be said to have becomethe vehicle of anything like

a regular and active commerce, seven sovereignshad occupied the throne of england, america had become an independentnation, louis xiv. and louis xv. had rotted and died, the frenchmonarchy had gone down in the red tempest of the revolution, and napoleonwas a name that was beginning to be talked about. truly, therewere snails in those days. the river's earliest commerce was in greatbarges--keelboats, broadhorns. they floated and sailed from theupper rivers to new orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediouslywarped and poled back by hand. a voyage down and back sometimesoccupied nine months. in time

this commerce increased until it gave employmentto hordes of rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, sufferingterrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarsefrolickers in moral sties like the natchez-under-the-hill of that day,heavy fighters, reckless fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted,profane; prodigal of their money, bankrupt at the end of thetrip, fond of barbaric finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in themain, honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty, and often picturesquelymagnanimous. by and by the steamboat intruded. then forfifteen or twenty years,

these men continued to run their keelboatsdown-stream, and the steamers did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmenselling their boats in new orleans, and returning home as deck passengersin the steamers. but after a while the steamboats so increasedin number and in speed that they were able to absorb the entire commerce;and then keelboating died a permanent death. the keelboatman becamea deck hand, or a mate, or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-berthswere not open to him, he took a berth on a pittsburgh coal-flat,or on a pine-raft constructed in the forests up toward the sources of themississippi.

in the heyday of the steamboating prosperity,the river from end to end was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts,all managed by hand, and employing hosts of the rough characterswhom i have been trying to describe. i remember the annual processionsof mighty rafts that used to glide by hannibal when i was a boy,--anacre or so of white, sweet-smelling boards in each raft, a crewof two dozen men or more, three or four wigwams scattered about theraft's vast level space for storm-quarters,--and i remember the rude waysand the tremendous talk of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen andtheir admiringly patterning

successors; for we used to swim out a quarteror third of a mile and get on these rafts and have a ride. by way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners,and that now-departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, i will throwin, in this place, a chapter from a book which i have been workingat, by fits and starts, during the past five or six years, and maypossibly finish in the course of five or six more. the book is a story whichdetails some passages in the life of an ignorant village boy, huckfinn, son of the town drunkard of my time out west, there. he has run awayfrom his persecuting

father, and from a persecuting good widowwho wishes to make a nice, truth-telling, respectable boy of him; andwith him a slave of the widow's has also escaped. they have founda fragment of a lumber raft (it is high water and dead summer time), andare floating down the river by night, and hiding in the willows by day,--boundfor cairo,--whence the negro will seek freedom in the heart ofthe free states. but in a fog, they pass cairo without knowing it. byand by they begin to suspect the truth, and huck finn is persuaded to endthe dismal suspense by swimming down to a huge raft which they haveseen in the distance ahead

of them, creeping aboard under cover of thedarkness, and gathering the needed information by eavesdropping:-- but you know a young person can't wait verywell when he is impatient to find a thing out. we talked it over, and byand by jim said it was such a black night, now, that it wouldn't be norisk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and listen--they wouldtalk about cairo, because they would be calculating to go ashore therefor a spree, maybe, or anyway they would send boats ashore to buywhiskey or fresh meat or something. jim had a wonderful level head,for a nigger: he could most

always start a good plan when you wanted one. i stood up and shook my rags off and jumpedinto the river, and struck out for the raft's light. by and by, wheni got down nearly to her, i eased up and went slow and cautious. buteverything was all right--nobody at the sweeps. so i swum downalong the raft till i was most abreast the camp fire in the middle,then i crawled aboard and inched along and got in amongst some bundlesof shingles on the weather side of the fire. there was thirteen men there--theywas the watch on deck of course. and a mighty rough-lookinglot, too. they had a jug, and

tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. oneman was singing--roaring, you may say; and it wasn't a nice song--fora parlor anyway. he roared through his nose, and strung out the lastword of every line very long. when he was done they all fetched a kind ofinjun war-whoop, and then another was sung. it begun:-- 'there was a woman in our towdn, in our towdndid dwed'l (dwell,) she loved her husband dear-i-lee, but anotherman twyste as wed'l. singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, ri-too,riloo, rilay - - - e, she and so on--fourteen verses. it was kind ofpoor, and when he was going

to start on the next verse one of them saidit was the tune the old cow died on; and another one said, 'oh, give usa rest.' and another one told him to take a walk. they made fun ofhim till he got mad and jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said hecould lame any thief in the lot. they was all about to make a break for him,but the biggest man there jumped up and says-- 'set whar you are, gentlemen. leave him tome; he's my meat.' then he jumped up in the air three times andcracked his heels together

every time. he flung off a buckskin coat thatwas all hung with fringes, and says, 'you lay thar tell the chawin-up'sdone;' and flung his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says,'you lay thar tell his sufferin's is over.' then he jumped up in the air and cracked hisheels together again and shouted out-- 'whoo-oop! i'm the old original iron-jawed,brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wildsof arkansaw!--look at me! i'm the man they call sudden death and generaldesolation! sired by a

hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brotherto the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side!look at me! i take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskeyfor breakfast when i'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakesand a dead body when i'm ailing! i split the everlasting rocks withmy glance, and i squench the thunder when i speak! whoo-oop! stand backand give me room according to my strength! blood's my natural drink,and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--andlay low and hold your breath, for i'm bout to turn myself loose!'

all the time he was getting this off, he wasshaking his head and looking fierce, and kind of swelling aroundin a little circle, tucking up his wrist-bands, and now and then straighteningup and beating his breast with his fist, saying, 'look at me,gentlemen!' when he got through, he jumped up and cracked his heelstogether three times, and let off a roaring 'whoo-oop! i'm the bloodiestson of a wildcat that lives!' then the man that had started the row tiltedhis old slouch hat down over his right eye; then he bent stoopingforward, with his back sagged

and his south end sticking out far, and hisfists a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went aroundin a little circle about three times, swelling himself up andbreathing hard. then he straightened, and jumped up and cracked hisheels together three times, before he lit again (that made them cheer),and he begun to shout like this-- 'whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for thekingdom of sorrow's a-coming! hold me down to the earth, for ifeel my powers a-working! whoo-oop! i'm a child of sin, don't let meget a start! smoked

glass, here, for all! don't attempt to lookat me with the naked eye, gentlemen! when i'm playful i use themeridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and dragthe atlantic ocean for whales! i scratch my head with the lightning,and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! when i'm cold, i bile thegulf of mexico and bathe in it; when i'm hot i fan myself with an equinoctialstorm; when i'm thirsty i reach up and suck a cloud dry likea sponge; when i range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks!whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread! i put my hand on the sun's face andmake it night in the earth;

i bite a piece out of the moon and hurry theseasons; i shake myself and crumble the mountains! contemplate methrough leather--don't use the naked eye! i'm the man with a petrified heartand biler-iron bowels! the massacre of isolated communities is the pastimeof my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the seriousbusiness of my life! the boundless vastness of the great american desertis my enclosed property, and i bury my dead on my own premises!' hejumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit (theycheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out: 'whoo-oop!bow your neck and spread, for

the pet child of calamity's a-coming!' then the other one went to swelling aroundand blowing again--the first one--the one they called bob; next, the childof calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both gotat it at the same time, swelling round and round each other and punchingtheir fists most into each other's faces, and whooping and jawinglike injuns; then bob called the child names, and the child called himnames back again: next, bob called him a heap rougher names and the childcome back at him with the very worst kind of language; next, bob knockedthe child's hat off, and

the child picked it up and kicked bob's ribbonyhat about six foot; bob went and got it and said never mind, thiswarn't going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man that neverforgot and never forgive, and so the child better look out, for therewas a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a living man, that he wouldhave to answer to him with the best blood in his body. the child saidno man was willinger than he was for that time to come, and he wouldgive bob fair warning, now, never to cross his path again, for he couldnever rest till he had waded in his blood, for such was his nature, thoughhe was sparing him now on

account of his family, if he had one. both of them was edging away in differentdirections, growling and shaking their heads and going on about whatthey was going to do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up andsays-- 'come back here, you couple of chicken-liveredcowards, and i'll thrash the two of ye!' and he done it, too. he snatched them, hejerked them this way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawlingfaster than they could get up. why, it warn't two minutes till theybegged like dogs--and

how the other lot did yell and laugh and claptheir hands all the way through, and shout 'sail in, corpse-maker!''hi! at him again, child of calamity!' 'bully for you, little davy!' well,it was a perfect pow-wow for a while. bob and the child had red nosesand black eyes when they got through. little davy made them own upthat they were sneaks and cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drinkwith a nigger; then bob and the child shook hands with each other,very solemn, and said they had always respected each other and was willingto let bygones be bygones. so then they washed their faces inthe river; and just then

there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing,and some of them went forward to man the sweeps there, and the restwent aft to handle the after-sweeps. i laid still and waited for fifteen minutes,and had a smoke out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; thenthe crossing was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around andwent to talking and singing again. next they got out an old fiddle, andone played and another patted juba, and the rest turned themselvesloose on a regular old-fashioned keel-boat break-down. they couldn'tkeep that up very long

without getting winded, so by and by theysettled around the jug again. they sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the lifefor me,' with a musing chorus, and then they got to talking aboutdifferences betwixt hogs, and their different kind of habits; and next aboutwomen and their different ways: and next about the best ways to putout houses that was afire; and next about what ought to be done with theinjuns; and next about what a king had to do, and how much he got; andnext about how to make cats fight; and next about what to do when a manhas fits; and next about differences betwixt clear-water rivers andmuddy-water ones. the man

they called ed said the muddy mississippiwater was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the ohio; he saidif you let a pint of this yaller mississippi water settle, you wouldhave about a half to three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom,according to the stage of the river, and then it warn't no betterthan ohio water--what you wanted to do was to keep it stirred up--andwhen the river was low, keep mud on hand to put in and thicken the waterup the way it ought to be. the child of calamity said that was so; hesaid there was nutritiousness in the mud, and a man that drunk mississippiwater could grow corn in

his stomach if he wanted to. he says-- 'you look at the graveyards; that tells thetale. trees won't grow worth chucks in a cincinnati graveyard, but in asent louis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. it'sall on account of the water the people drunk before they laid up.a cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil any.' and they talked about how ohio water didn'tlike to mix with mississippi water. ed said if you take the mississippion a rise when the ohio is low, you'll find a wide band of clear waterall the way down the east

side of the mississippi for a hundred mileor more, and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile from shore andpass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of the way across.then they talked about how to keep tobacco from getting moldy, and fromthat they went into ghosts and told about a lot that other folks hadseen; but ed says-- 'why don't you tell something that you'veseen yourselves? now let me have a say. five years ago i was on a raftas big as this, and right along here it was a bright moonshiny night,and i was on watch and boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of mypards was a man named dick

allbright, and he come along to where i wassitting, forrard--gaping and stretching, he was--and stooped down on theedge of the raft and washed his face in the river, and come and set downby me and got out his pipe, and had just got it filled, when he looksup and says-- '"why looky-here," he says, "ain't that buckmiller's place, over yander in the bend." '"yes," says i, "it is--why." he laid hispipe down and leant his head on his hand, and says-- '"i thought we'd be furder down." i says--

'"i thought it too, when i went off watch"--wewas standing six hours on and six off--"but the boys told me," i says,"that the raft didn't seem to hardly move, for the last hour," says i,"though she's a slipping along all right, now," says i. he give a kindof a groan, and says-- '"i've seed a raft act so before, along here,"he says, "'pears to me the current has most quit above the head ofthis bend durin' the last two years," he says. 'well, he raised up two or three times, andlooked away off and around on the water. that started me at it, too.a body is always doing what he

sees somebody else doing, though there mayn'tbe no sense in it. pretty soon i see a black something floating on thewater away off to stabboard and quartering behind us. i see he was lookingat it, too. i says-- '"what's that?" he says, sort of pettish,-- '"tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l." '"an empty bar'l!" says i, "why," says i,"a spy-glass is a fool to your eyes. how can you tell it's an empty bar'l?"he says-- '"i don't know; i reckon it ain't a bar'l,but i thought it might be," says he.

'"yes," i says, "so it might be, and it mightbe anything else, too; a body can't tell nothing about it, such a distanceas that," i says. 'we hadn't nothing else to do, so we kepton watching it. by and by i says-- '"why looky-here, dick allbright, that thing'sa-gaining on us, i believe." 'he never said nothing. the thing gained andgained, and i judged it must be a dog that was about tired out. well,we swung down into the crossing, and the thing floated acrossthe bright streak of the

moonshine, and, by george, it was bar'l. saysi-- '"dick allbright, what made you think thatthing was a bar'l, when it was a half a mile off," says i. says he-- '"i don't know." says i-- '"you tell me, dick allbright." he says-- '"well, i knowed it was a bar'l; i've seenit before; lots has seen it; they says it's a haunted bar'l." 'i called the rest of the watch, and theycome and stood there, and i told them what dick said. it floated rightalong abreast, now, and

didn't gain any more. it was about twentyfoot off. some was for having it aboard, but the rest didn't want to. dickallbright said rafts that had fooled with it had got bad luck by it.the captain of the watch said he didn't believe in it. he said he reckonedthe bar'l gained on us because it was in a little better currentthan what we was. he said it would leave by and by. 'so then we went to talking about other things,and we had a song, and then a breakdown; and after that the captainof the watch called for another song; but it was clouding up, now,and the bar'l stuck right

thar in the same place, and the song didn'tseem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it,and there warn't any cheers, but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody saidanything for a minute. then everybody tried to talk at once, and one chapgot off a joke, but it warn't no use, they didn't laugh, and eventhe chap that made the joke didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual. weall just settled down glum, and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy andoncomfortable. well, sir, it shut down black and still, and then the windbegin to moan around, and next the lightning begin to play and the thunderto grumble. and pretty

soon there was a regular storm, and in themiddle of it a man that was running aft stumbled and fell and sprainedhis ankle so that he had to lay up. this made the boys shake theirheads. and every time the lightning come, there was that bar'l withthe blue lights winking around it. we was always on the look-out for it.but by and by, towards dawn, she was gone. when the day come we couldn'tsee her anywhere, and we warn't sorry, neither. 'but next night about half-past nine, whenthere was songs and high jinks going on, here she comes again, andtook her old roost on the

stabboard side. there warn't no more highjinks. everybody got solemn; nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody todo anything but set around moody and look at the bar'l. it begun to cloudup again. when the watch changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead ofturning in. the storm ripped and roared around all night, and in the middleof it another man tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off.the bar'l left towards day, and nobody see it go. 'everybody was sober and down in the mouthall day. i don't mean the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquoralone--not that. they was

quiet, but they all drunk more than usual--nottogether--but each man sidled off and took it private, by himself. 'after dark the off watch didn't turn in;nobody sung, nobody talked; the boys didn't scatter around, neither; theysort of huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there,perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heaving asigh once in a while. and then, here comes the bar'l again. she tookup her old place. she staid there all night; nobody turned in. the stormcome on again, after midnight. it got awful dark; the rain poureddown; hail, too; the

thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; thewind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over everything in bigsheets of glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the riverlashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and therewas that bar'l jiggering along, same as ever. the captain ordered thewatch to man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go--nomore sprained ankles for them, they said. they wouldn't even walk aft.well then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and thelightning killed two men of the after watch, and crippled two more. crippledthem how, says you?

why, sprained their ankles! 'the bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings,towards dawn. well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning.after that the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talked lowtogether. but none of them herded with dick allbright. they all givehim the cold shake. if he come around where any of the men was, they splitup and sidled away. they wouldn't man the sweeps with him. the captainhad all the skiffs hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, andwouldn't let the dead men be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believea man that got ashore

would come back; and he was right. 'after night come, you could see pretty plainthat there was going to be trouble if that bar'l come again; there wassuch a muttering going on. a good many wanted to kill dick allbright, becausehe'd seen the bar'l on other trips, and that had an ugly look. somewanted 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 andsteady, 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, andyou don't; well, then, how's the best way to stop it? burn it up,--that'sthe way. i'm going to fetch it aboard," he says. and before anybodycould say a word, in he went. 'he swum to it, and as he come pushing itto the raft, the men spread to one side. but the old man got it aboardand busted in the head,

and there was a baby in it! yes, sir, a starknaked 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 wordsin the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you without ajint started, anywheres. yes, he said he used to live up at the head ofthis bend, and one night he choked his child, which was crying, not intendingto kill it,--which was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, andburied it in a bar'l, before

his wife got home, and off he went, and struckthe northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the third yearthat 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 comeany more after that. he said if the men would stand it one more night,--andwas a-going on like that,--but the men had got enough. they startedto get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbedthe little child all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it huggedup to his breast and shedding tears, and we never see him again in thislife, poor old suffering soul,

nor charles william neither.' 'who was shedding tears?' says bob; 'was itallbright or the baby?' 'why, allbright, of course; didn't i tellyou the baby was dead. been dead three years--how could it cry?' 'well, never mind how it could cry--how couldit keep all that time?' says davy. 'you answer me that.' 'i don't know how it done it,' says ed. 'itdone it though--that's all i know about it.' 'say--what did they do with the bar'l?' saysthe child of calamity.

'why, they hove it overboard, and it sunklike 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 waskilled 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 bettertake a pill? you look bad--don't you feel pale?' says the childof 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--andwe'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 canworry down the rest.' ed got up mad and said they could all go tosome place which he ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aftcussing to himself, and they

yelling and jeering at him, and roaring andlaughing 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 amongstthe shingle bundles where i was, and put his hand on me. i waswarm 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 crowdedup 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 theheels.' i began to beg, and crept out amongst themtrembling. they looked me over, wondering, and the child of calamitysays-- 'a cussed thief! lend a hand and less heavehim overboard!' 'no,' says big bob, 'less get out the paint-potand paint him a sky blue all over from head to heel, and then heavehim over!'

'good, that 's it. go for the paint, jimmy.' when the paint come, and bob took the brushand 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'llpaint the man that tetches him!' so i looked around on them, and some of themgrumbled and growled, and bob put down the paint, and the others didn'ttake it up. 'come here to the fire, and less see whatyou're up to here,' says davy.

'now set down there and give an account ofyourself. how long have you been aboard here?' 'not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' saysi. '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 knowwhat to say, so i just 'charles william allbright, sir.' then they roared--the whole crowd; and i wasmighty glad i said that,

because maybe laughing would get them in abetter humor. when they got done laughing, davy says-- 'it won't hardly do, charles william. youcouldn't have growed this much in five year, and you was a baby when youcome out of the bar'l, you know, and dead at that. come, now, tell astraight 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 bendyonder. 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 hewould 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; paphe 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 isit a lie?' 'yes, sir, in a trading scow. she lays upat 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 aboardhere, for? to steal?' 'no, sir, i didn't.--it was only to get aride on the raft. all boys does that.' 'well, i know that. but what did you hidefor?' '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 scrapeshereafter?' ''deed i will, boss. you try me.' 'all right, then. you ain't but little waysfrom shore. overboard with you, and don't you make a fool of yourselfanother time this way.--blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you tillyou were black and blue!' i didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboardand broke for shore. when jim come along by and by, the big raftwas away out of sight around the point. i swum out and got aboard, andwas mighty glad to see home again.

the boy did not get the information he wasafter, but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsmanand keelboatman which i desire to offer in this place. i now come to a phase of the mississippi riverlife of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me to warrantfull examination--the marvelous science of piloting, as displayedthere. 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 permanentambition 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 onlytransient. when a circus came and went, it left us all burning to becomeclowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section leftus all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope thatif we lived and were good, god would permit us to be pirates. these ambitionsfaded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatmanalways remained. once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upwardfrom st. louis, and

another downward from keokuk. before theseevents, the day was glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was adead and empty thing. not only the boys, but the whole village, feltthis. after all these years i can picture that old time to myself now, justas it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer'smorning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sittingin front of the water street stores, with their splint-bottomedchairs tilted back against the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouchedover their faces, asleep--with shingle-shavings enough around to show whatbroke 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 lonelylittle freight piles scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids'on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkardasleep in the shadow of them; two or three wood flats at the headof the wharf, but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the waveletsagainst them; the great mississippi, the majestic, the magnificentmississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun;the dense forest away on the other side; the 'point' above the town, andthe 'point' below, bounding

the river-glimpse and turning it into a sortof sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one. presentlya 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 clatterof 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 thecoming 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 sharpand trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gildeddevice of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, a glassand 'gingerbread', perched on top of the 'texas' deck behind them; thepaddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above theboat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deckare fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flaggallantly flying from the

jack-staff; the furnace doors are open andthe 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 thechimneys--a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just beforearriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broadstage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand standspicturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pentsteam is screaming through the gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand,a bell rings, the wheels

stop; then they turn back, churning the waterto foam, and the steamer is at rest. then such a scramble as thereis to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to dischargefreight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursingas the mates facilitate it all with! ten minutes later the steamer isunder way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuingfrom the chimneys. after ten more minutes the town is dead again, andthe town drunkard asleep by the skids once more. my father was a justice of the peace, andi supposed he possessed

the power of life and death over all men andcould hang anybody that offended him. this was distinction enoughfor 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 couldcome out with a white apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, whereall my old comrades could see me; later i thought i would rather bethe deckhand who stood on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of ropein his hand, because he was particularly conspicuous. but these were onlyday-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 along time. at last he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' ona 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 wouldalways manage to have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarriedat our town, and he would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where wecould all see him and envy him and loathe him. and whenever his boatwas laid up he would come home

and swell around the town in his blackestand greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he wasa steamboatman; and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in histalk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot common people couldnot understand them. he would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse inan easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead. and he wasalways talking about 'st. looy' like an old citizen; he would refercasually to occasions when he 'was coming down fourth street,' or whenhe was 'passing by the planter's house,' or when there was a fireand he took a turn on the

brakes of 'the old big missouri;' and thenhe would go on and lie about how many towns the size of ours were burneddown there that day. two or three of the boys had long been personsof consideration among us because they had been to st. louis onceand had a vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of theirglory was over now. they lapsed into a humble silence, and learnedto disappear when the ruthless 'cub'-engineer approached. this fellow hadmoney, too, and hair oil. also an ignorant silver watch and a showybrass watch chain. he wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. ifever a youth was cordially

admired and hated by his comrades, this onewas. no girl could withstand his charms. he 'cut out' every boy in thevillage. when his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentmentamong us such as we had not known for months. but when he came home thenext week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered up andbandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody,it seemed to us that the partiality of providence for an undeservingreptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism. this creature's career could produce but oneresult, and it speedily

followed. boy after boy managed to get onthe river. the minister's son became an engineer. the doctor's and the post-master'ssons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's sonbecame a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, andtwo sons of the county judge, became pilots. pilot was the grandest positionof all. the pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princelysalary--from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollarsa month, and no board to pay. two months of his wages would pay a preacher'ssalary for a year. now some of us were left disconsolate. we couldnot get on the river--at

least our parents would not let us. so by and by i ran away. i said i never wouldcome home again till i was a pilot and could come in glory. but somehowi could not manage it. i went meekly aboard a few of the boats thatlay packed together like sardines at the long st. louis wharf, andvery humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and shortwords from mates and clerks. i had to make the best of this sortof treatment for the time being, but i had comforting daydreams of afuture 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 struggledto a reluctant death, and i found myself without an ambition. but iwas ashamed to go home. i was in cincinnati, and i set to work to map outa new career. i had been reading about the recent explorationof the river amazon by an expedition sent out by our government. itwas said that the expedition, owing to difficulties, had not thoroughlyexplored a part of the country lying about the head-waters, some four thousandmiles from the mouth of

the river. it was only about fifteen hundredmiles from cincinnati to new orleans, where i could doubtless get aship. i had thirty dollars left; i would go and complete the explorationof the amazon. this was all the thought i gave to the subject. i neverwas great in matters of detail. i packed my valise, and took passageon an ancient tub called the 'paul jones,' for new orleans. for thesum of sixteen dollars i had the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her'main saloon principally to myself, for she was not a creature to attractthe eye of wiser travelers.

when we presently got under way and went pokingdown the broad ohio, i became a new being, and the subject of myown admiration. i was a traveler! a word never had tasted so goodin my mouth before. i had an exultant sense of being bound for mysteriouslands and distant climes which i never have felt in so uplifting adegree since. i was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelingsdeparted out of me, and i was able to look down and pity the untraveledwith a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it. still, whenwe stopped at villages and wood-yards, i could not help lolling carelesslyupon the railings of the

boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the countryboys on the bank. if they did not seem to discover me, i presentlysneezed to attract their attention, or moved to a position where theycould not help seeing me. and as soon as i knew they saw me i gapedand stretched, and gave other signs of being mightily bored with traveling. i kept my hat off all the time, and stayedwhere the wind and the sun could strike me, because i wanted to get thebronzed and weather-beaten look of an old traveler. before the secondday was half gone i experienced a joy which filled me with thepurest gratitude; for i saw

that the skin had begun to blister and peeloff my face and neck. i wished that the boys and girls at home couldsee me now. we reached louisville in time--at least theneighborhood of it. we stuck hard and fast on the rocks in the middle ofthe river, and lay there four days. i was now beginning to feel a strongsense of being a part of the boat's family, a sort of infant sonto the captain and younger brother to the officers. there is no estimatingthe pride i took in this grandeur, or the affection that began to swelland grow in me for those people. i could not know how the lordly steamboatmanscorns that sort

of presumption in a mere landsman. i particularlylonged to acquire the least trifle of notice from the big stormymate, and i was on the alert for an opportunity to do him a service tothat end. it came at last. the riotous powwow of setting a spar was goingon down on the forecastle, and i went down there and stood around inthe way--or mostly skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared ageneral order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar. i sprang to his sideand said: 'tell me where it is--i'll fetch it!' if a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomaticservice for the emperor

of russia, the monarch could not have beenmore astounded than the mate was. he even stopped swearing. he stood andstared down at me. it took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remainstogether again. then he said impressively: 'well, if this don'tbeat hell!' and turned to his work with the air of a man who had been confrontedwith a problem too abstruse for solution. i crept away, and courted solitude for therest of the day. i did not go to dinner; i stayed away from supper untileverybody else had finished. i did not feel so much like a member of theboat'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 mateso, because it was not in (young) human nature not to admire him. hewas huge and muscular, his face was bearded and whiskered all over; hehad a red woman and a blue woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on eachside of a blue anchor with a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanityhe was sublime. when he was getting out cargo at a landing, i wasalways where i could see and hear. he felt all the majesty of his greatposition, and made the world feel it, too. when he gave even the simplestorder, he discharged

it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long,reverberating peal of profanity thundering after it. i could nothelp 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 thegang-plank moved a foot farther forward, he would probably say: 'james,or william, one of you push that plank forward, please;' but putthe mate in his place and he would roar out: 'here, now, start that gang-plankfor'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-dashedsplit between a tired mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!' i wished i could talk like that. when the soreness of my adventure with themate had somewhat worn off, i began timidly to make up to the humblestofficial connected with the boat--the night watchman. he snubbed myadvances at first, but i presently ventured to offer him a new chalkpipe; and that softened him.

so he allowed me to sit with him by the bigbell on the hurricane deck, and in time he melted into conversation. hecould not well have helped it, i hung with such homage on his words andso plainly showed that i felt honored by his notice. he told me thenames of dim capes and shadowy islands as we glided by them in thesolemnity of the night, under the winking stars, and by and by gotto talking about himself. he seemed over-sentimental for a man whosesalary was six dollars a week--or rather he might have seemed so toan older person than i. but i drank in his words hungrily, and with afaith that might have moved

mountains if it had been applied judiciously.what was it to me that he was soiled and seedy and fragrant with gin?what was it to me that his grammar was bad, his construction worse, andhis profanity so void of art that it was an element of weaknessrather than strength in his conversation? he was a wronged man, a manwho had seen trouble, and that was enough for me. as he mellowed into hisplaintive history his tears dripped upon the lantern in his lap, and icried, too, from sympathy. he said he was the son of an english nobleman--eitheran earl or an alderman, he could not remember which, butbelieved was both; his

father, the nobleman, loved him, but his motherhated him from the cradle; and so while he was still a littleboy he was sent to 'one of them old, ancient colleges'--he couldn't rememberwhich; and by and by his father died and his mother seized theproperty and 'shook' him as he phrased it. after his mother shook him,members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted used their influenceto get him the position of 'loblolly-boy in a ship;' and from that pointmy watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality and branchedout into a narrative that bristled all along with incredible adventures;a narrative that was so

reeking with bloodshed and so crammed withhair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and unconscious personalvillainies, that i sat speechless, enjoying, shuddering, wondering,worshipping. it was a sore blight to find out afterwardsthat he was a low, vulgar, ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug,an untraveled native of the wilds of illinois, who had absorbed wildcatliterature and appropriated its marvels, until in time he had woven oddsand ends of the mess into this yarn, and then gone on telling it tofledglings like me, until he had come to believe it himself.

chapter 6 a cub-pilot's experience what with lying on the rocks four days atlouisville, and some other delays, the poor old 'paul jones' fooled awayabout 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 hetaught me how to steer the boat, and thus made the fascination of riverlife more potent than ever for me. it also gave me a chance to get acquaintedwith a youth who had taken deck passage--more's the pity; for he easilyborrowed six dollars of me

on a promise to return to the boat and payit back to me the day after we should arrive. but he probably died orforgot, for he never came. it was doubtless the former, since he had saidhis parents were wealthy, and he only traveled deck passage becauseit was cooler.{footnote [1. 'deck' passage, i.e. steerage passage.]} i soon discovered two things. one was thata vessel would not be likely to sail for the mouth of the amazon underten or twelve years; and the other was that the nine or ten dollars stillleft in my pocket would not suffice for so imposing an exploration asi had planned, even if i could

afford to wait for a ship. therefore it followedthat i must contrive a new career. the 'paul jones' was now boundfor st. louis. i planned a siege against my pilot, and at the end ofthree hard days he surrendered. he agreed to teach me the mississippiriver 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 thirteenhundred miles of the great mississippi river with the easy confidenceof my time of life. if i had really known what i was about to require ofmy faculties, i should not

have had the courage to begin. i supposedthat all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the river, and i did notconsider that that could be much of a trick, since it was so wide. the boat backed out from new orleans at fourin the afternoon, and it was 'our watch' until eight. mr. bixby, mychief, 'straightened her up,' plowed her along past the sterns of theother boats that lay at the levee, and then said, 'here, take her; shavethose 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 methat we were about to scrape

the side off every ship in the line, we wereso 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 betterthan to get us into such peril, but i was too wise to express it. inhalf a minute i had a wide margin of safety intervening between the 'pauljones' and the ships; and within ten seconds more i was set aside indisgrace, and mr. bixby was going into danger again and flaying me alivewith abuse of my cowardice. i was stung, but i was obliged to admire theeasy 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 wasclose 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 tobe a down-stream pilot and leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence. now and then mr. bixby called my attentionto certain things. said he, 'this is six-mile point.' i assented.it was pleasant enough information, but i could not see the bearingof 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, 'thisis 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 crowdup around a point, hugging the shore with affection, and then say: 'theslack water ends here, abreast this bunch of china-trees; now wecross 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 sugarplantation, or i yawed too

far from shore, and so dropped back into disgraceagain and got abused. the watch was ended at last, and we took supperand went to bed. at midnight the glare of a lantern shone in myeyes, and the night watchman said-- 'come! turn out!' and then he left. i could not understand thisextraordinary procedure; so i presently gave up trying to, and dozedoff to sleep. pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this timehe was gruff. i was annoyed. i said:--

'what do you want to come bothering aroundhere in the middle of the night for. now as like as not i'll not getto sleep again to-night.' the watchman said-- 'well, if this an't good, i'm blest.' the 'off-watch' was just turning in, and iheard 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 somesugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-babyto him.' about this time mr. bixby appeared on thescene. something like a minute

later i was climbing the pilot-house stepswith some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. mr. bixby was closebehind, commenting. here was something fresh--this thing of gettingup in the middle of the night to go to work. it was a detail in pilotingthat 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 getup out of a warm bed to run them. i began to fear that piloting was notquite so romantic as i had imagined it was; there was something veryreal and work-like about this new phase of it.

it was a rather dingy night, although a fairnumber of stars were out. the big mate was at the wheel, and he hadthe old tub pointed at a star and was holding her straight up the middleof the river. the shores on either hand were not much more than half amile apart, but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever so vague andindistinct. the mate said:-- 'we've got to land at jones's plantation,sir.' the vengeful spirit in me exulted. i saidto myself, i wish you joy of your job, mr. bixby; you'll have a goodtime finding mr. jones's plantation such a night as this; and i hopeyou 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 ofwater at this stage: it's no great distance to the lower, and you'll haveto get along with that.' 'all right, sir. if jones don't like it he'llhave to lump it, i reckon.' and then the mate left. my exultation beganto cool and my wonder to

come up. here was a man who not only proposedto find this plantation on such a night, but to find either end of ityou preferred. i dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but i was carryingabout as many short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so i heldmy peace. all i desired to ask mr. bixby was the simple question whetherhe was ass enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantationon a night when all plantations were exactly alike and all thesame color. but i held in. i used to have fine inspirations of prudencein those days. mr. bixby made for the shore and soon wasscraping 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 inthe keeping of a peculiarly reckless outcast. presently he turned on meand said:-- 'what's the name of the first point abovenew 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 footagain, 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 nameof 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, abovetwelve-mile point, to cross over?'

'i--i--don't know.' 'you--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawlingmanner 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, sohelp me moses! the idea of you being a pilot--you! why, you don't knowenough to pilot a cow down a lane.' oh, but his wrath was up! he was a nervousman, and he shuffled from one

side of his wheel to the other as if the floorwas hot. he would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scaldme again. 'look here! what do you suppose i told youthe names of those points for?' i tremblingly considered a moment, and thenthe devil of temptation provoked me to say:-- 'well--to--to--be entertaining, i thought.' this was a red rag to the bull. he raged andstormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that i judge it madehim blind, because he ran

over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. ofcourse the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. never was aman so grateful as mr. bixby was: because he was brim full, and here weresubjects who would talk back. he threw open a window, thrust his headout, and such an irruption followed as i never had heard before. thefainter and farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher mr. bixbylifted his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. when he closedthe window he was empty. you could have drawn a seine through his systemand not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. presentlyhe said to me in the

gentlest way-- 'my boy, you must get a little memorandumbook, and every time i tell you a thing, put it down right away. there'sonly 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 mymemory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges. however, idid not feel discouraged long. i judged that it was best to make some allowances,for doubtless mr. bixby was 'stretching.' presently he pulleda rope and struck a few

strokes on the big bell. the stars were allgone now, and the night was as black as ink. i could hear the wheels churnalong the bank, but i was not entirely certain that i could seethe shore. the voice of the invisible watchman called up from the hurricanedeck-- 'what's this, sir?' 'jones's plantation.' i said to myself, i wish i might venture tooffer a small bet that it isn't. but i did not chirp. i only waitedto see. mr. bixby handled the engine bells, and in due time the boat's nosecame to the land, a torch

glowed from the forecastle, a man skippedashore, 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 findingof that plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened;but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years.' and i fully believedit was an accident, too. by the time we had gone seven or eight hundredmiles up the river, i had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-streamsteersman, in daylight, and before we reached st. louis i had madea trifle of progress in

night-work, but only a trifle. i had a note-bookthat fairly bristled with the names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands,bends, reaches, etc.; but the information was to be found only inthe notebook--none of it was in my head. it made my heart ache to thinki had only got half of the river set down; for as our watch was fourhours off and four hours on, day and night, there was a long four-hourgap in my book for every time i had slept since the voyage began. my chief was presently hired to go on a bignew orleans boat, and i packed my satchel and went with him. she wasa grand affair. when i

stood in her pilot-house i was so far abovethe water that i seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks stretchedso far away, fore and aft, below me, that i wondered how i couldever have considered the little 'paul jones' a large craft. there wereother differences, too. the 'paul jones's' pilot-house was a cheap,dingy, battered rattle-trap, cramped for room: but here was a sumptuousglass 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 benchwhere visiting pilots sit, to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright,fanciful 'cuspadores'

instead of a broad wooden box filled withsawdust; 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 takeheart once more to believe that piloting was a romantic sort of occupationafter all. the moment we were under way i began to prowl about thegreat steamer and fill myself with joy. she was as clean and as dainty asa drawing-room; when i

looked down her long, gilded saloon, it waslike gazing through a splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, bysome gifted sign-painter, on every stateroom door; she glittered withno end of prism-fringed chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant,the bar was marvelous, and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholsteredat incredible cost. the boiler deck (i.e. the second story ofthe boat, so to speak) was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; sowith the forecastle; and there was no pitiful handful of deckhands,firemen, and roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of men. the fireswere fiercely glaring

from a long row of furnaces, and over themwere eight huge boilers! this was unutterable pomp. the mighty engines--butenough of this. i had never felt so fine before. and when i foundthat the regiment of natty servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfactionwas complete. chapter 7 a daring deed when i returned to the pilot-house st. louiswas gone and i was lost. here was a piece of river which was all downin 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 ihad never faced about to see

how it looked when it was behind me. my heartbroke again, for it was plain that i had got to learn this troublesomeriver both ways. the pilot-house was full of pilots, goingdown to 'look at the river.' what is called the 'upper river' (the twohundred miles between st. louis and cairo, where the ohio comes in)was low; and the mississippi changes its channel so constantly that thepilots used to always find it necessary to run down to cairo to takea fresh look, when their boats were to lie in port a week; that is, whenthe water was at a low stage. a deal of this 'looking at the river' wasdone by poor fellows who

seldom had a berth, and whose only hope ofgetting one lay in their being always freshly posted and thereforeready 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. anda good many of them constantly ran up and down inspecting theriver, not because they ever really hoped to get a berth, but because (theybeing guests of the boat) it was cheaper to 'look at the river' thanstay ashore and pay board. in time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes,and only infested boats that had an established reputation for settinggood tables. all visiting

pilots were useful, for they were always readyand willing, winter or summer, night or day, to go out in the yawland help buoy the channel or assist the boat's pilots in any way theycould. they were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers,when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river theyare always understood and are always interesting. your true pilot caresnothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in hisoccupation surpasses the pride of kings. we had a fine company of these river-inspectorsalong, this trip. there

were eight or ten; and there was abundanceof room for them in our great pilot-house. two or three of them wore polishedsilk hats, elaborate shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves,and patent-leather boots. they were choice in their english, and borethemselves with a dignity proper to men of solid means and prodigiousreputation as pilots. the others were more or less loosely clad, andwore upon their heads tall felt cones that were suggestive of the daysof the commonwealth. i was a cipher in this august company, andfelt subdued, not to say torpid. i was not even of sufficient consequenceto assist at the wheel

when it was necessary to put the tiller harddown in a hurry; the guest that stood nearest did that when occasionrequired--and this was pretty much all the time, because of the crookednessof the channel and the scant water. i stood in a corner; and thetalk 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 itthe way one of the boys on the "diana" told me; started out about fifty yardsabove the wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabin underplum point till i raised

the reef--quarter less twain--then straightenedup for the middle bar till i got well abreast the old one-limbedcotton-wood in the bend, then got my stern on the cotton-wood and headon the low place above the point, and came through a-booming--nine anda 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 itlower down; started out from the false point--mark twain--raised the secondreef 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 thisquiet snub dropped on the boaster and 'settled' him. and so theywent on talk-talk-talking. meantime, the thing that was running in mymind was, 'now if my ears hear aright, i have not only to get the namesof all the towns and islands and bends, and so on, by heart, buti must even get up a warm

personal acquaintanceship with every old snagand one-limbed cotton-wood and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banksof this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, i mustactually know where these things are in the dark, unless these guestsare gifted with eyes that can pierce through two miles of solid blackness;i wish the piloting business was in jericho and i had never thoughtof it.' at dusk mr. bixby tapped the big bell threetimes (the signal to land), and the captain emerged from his drawing-roomin the forward end of the texas, and looked up inquiringly. mr. bixbysaid--

'we will lay up here all night, captain.' 'very well, sir.' that was all. the boat came to shore and wastied up for the night. it seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot coulddo as he pleased, without asking so grand a captain's permission. itook my supper and went immediately to bed, discouraged by myday's observations and experiences. my late voyage's note-bookingwas but a confusion of meaningless names. it had tangled me all upin a knot every time i had looked at it in the daytime. i now hoped forrespite in sleep; but

no, it reveled all through my head till sunriseagain, a frantic and tireless nightmare. next morning i felt pretty rusty and low-spirited.we went booming along, taking a good many chances, for wewere anxious to 'get out of the river' (as getting out to cairo was called)before night should overtake us. but mr. bixby's partner, theother pilot, presently grounded the boat, and we lost so much timein getting her off that it was plain that darkness would overtakeus a good long way above the mouth. this was a great misfortune, especiallyto certain of our

visiting pilots, whose boats would have towait for their return, no matter how long that might be. it soberedthe pilot-house talk a good deal. coming up-stream, pilots did not mindlow 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 rundown-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 crossingbefore night, we could

venture the rest, for we would have plainersailing and better water. but it would be insanity to attempt hat islandat night. so there was a deal of looking at watches all the restof the day, and a constant ciphering upon the speed we were making; hatisland was the eternal subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimeswe were delayed in a bad crossing, and down it went again. forhours all hands lay under the burden of this suppressed excitement; it waseven communicated to me, and i got to feeling so solicitous about hatisland, and under such an awful pressure of responsibility, thati wished i might have five

minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relievingbreath, 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 comingup-stream, because of his greater familiarity with it; but bothremained in the pilot house constantly. an hour before sunset, mr. bixby took thewheel and mr. w----stepped aside. for the next thirty minutes every manheld his watch in his hand and was restless, silent, and uneasy. at lastsomebody said, with a doomful sigh--

'well, yonder's hat island--and we can't makeit.' all the watches closed with a snap, everybody sighed and mutteredsomething about its being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could onlyhave got here half an hour sooner!' and the place was thick with theatmosphere of disappointment. some started to go out, but loitered, hearingno bell-tap to land. the sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat wenton. inquiring looks passed from one guest to another; and one who hadhis hand on the door-knob and had turned it, waited, then presentlytook away his hand and let the knob turn back again. we bore steadily downthe bend. more looks were

exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--butno words. insensibly the men drew together behind mr. bixby, asthe sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out. the dead silence andsense of waiting became oppressive. mr. bixby pulled the cord, andtwo deep, mellow notes from the big bell floated off on the night. thena 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 outof the distance, and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on thehurricane deck.

'm-a-r-k three!... m-a-r-k three!... quarter-lessthree!... half twain!... quarter twain!... m-a-r-k twain!...quarter-less--' mr. bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answeredby faint jinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.the steam began to whistle through the gauge-cocks. the criesof 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 talkingunder his breath. nobody was calm and easy but mr. bixby. he would puthis 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 ofa wide and gloomy sea--he would meet and fasten her there. out of themurmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent sentence now and then--suchas-- '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, andwe 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 driftingwas the dismalest work; it held one's heart still. presently i discovereda blacker gloom than that which surrounded us. it was the headof the island. we were closing right down upon it. we entered its deepershadow, and so imminent seemed the peril that i was likely to suffocate;and i had the strongest impulse to do something, anything, to savethe vessel. but still mr. bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent asa cat, and all the pilots

stood shoulder to shoulder at his back. 'she'll not make it!' somebody whispered. the water grew shoaler and shoaler, by theleadsman's cries, till it was down to-- 'eight-and-a-half!.... e-i-g-h-t feet!....e-i-g-h-t feet!.... seven-and--' mr. bixby said warningly through his speakingtube to the engineer-- 'stand by, now!' 'aye-aye, sir!'

'seven-and-a-half! seven feet! six-and--' we touched bottom! instantly mr. bixby seta lot of bells ringing, shouted through the tube, 'now, let her haveit--every ounce you've got!' then to his partner, 'put her hard down!snatch her! snatch her!' the boat rasped and ground her way throughthe sand, hung upon the apex of disaster a single tremendous instant, andthen over she went! and such a shout as went up at mr. bixby's backnever loosened the roof of a pilot-house before! there was no more trouble after that. mr.bixby was a hero that night;

and it was some little time, too, before hisexploit ceased to be talked about by river men. fully to realize the marvelous precision requiredin laying the great steamer in her marks in that murky waste ofwater, one should know that not only must she pick her intricate way throughsnags and blind reefs, and then shave the head of the islandso closely as to brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, butat one place she must pass almost within arm's reach of a sunken andinvisible wreck that would snatch the hull timbers from under her ifshe should strike it, and

destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worthof steam-boat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fiftyhuman lives into the bargain. the last remark i heard that night was a complimentto mr. bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with unction by oneof our guests. he said-- 'by the shadow of death, but he's a lightningpilot!' chapter 8 perplexing lessons at the end of what seemed a tedious while,i had managed to pack my head full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,'and bends; and a curiously

inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. however,inasmuch as i could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string ofthese names without leaving out more than ten miles of river in everyfifty, i began to feel that i could take a boat down to new orleans ifi could make her skip those little gaps. but of course my complacencycould hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air, beforemr. bixby would think of something to fetch it down again. one dayhe turned on me suddenly with this settler-- 'what is the shape of walnut bend?'

he might as well have asked me my grandmother'sopinion of protoplasm. i reflected respectfully, and then said ididn't know it had any particular shape. my gunpowdery chief wentoff with a bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing untilhe was out of adjectives. i had learned long ago that he only carriedjust so many rounds of ammunition, and was sure to subside into avery placable and even remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as theywere all gone. that word 'old' is merely affectionate; he was not morethan thirty-four. i waited. by and by he said--

'my boy, you've got to know the shape of theriver perfectly. it is all there is left to steer by on a very darknight. everything else is blotted out and gone. but mind you, ithasn't the same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.' 'how on earth am i ever going to learn it,then?' 'how do you follow a hall at home in the dark.because you know the shape of it. you can't see it.' 'do you mean to say that i've got to knowall the million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminableriver as well as i

know the shape of the front hall at home?' 'on my honor, you've got to know them betterthan any man ever did know the shapes of the halls in his own house.' 'i wish i was dead!' 'now i don't want to discourage you, but--' 'well, pile it on me; i might as well haveit now as another time.' 'you see, this has got to be learned; thereisn't any getting around it. a clear starlight night throws such heavyshadows that if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you wouldclaw away from every bunch

of timber, because you would take the blackshadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would be getting scaredto death every fifteen minutes by the watch. you would be fifty yardsfrom shore all the time when you ought to be within fifty feet ofit. you can't see a snag in one of those shadows, but you know exactlywhere it is, and the shape of the river tells you when you are comingto it. then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very differentshape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night.all shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones,too; and you'd run them for

straight lines only you know better. you boldlydrive your boat right into what seems to be a solid, straight wall(you knowing very well that in reality there is a curve there), and thatwall falls back and makes way for you. then there's your gray mist.you take a night when there's one of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists,and then there isn't any particular shape to a shore. a gray mist wouldtangle the head of the oldest man that ever lived. well, then, differentkinds of moonlight change the shape of the river in differentways. you see--' 'oh, don't say any more, please! have i gotto learn the shape of the

river according to all these five hundredthousand different ways? if i tried to carry all that cargo in my headit would make me stoop-shouldered.' 'no! you only learn the shape of the river,and you learn it with such absolute certainty that you can always steerby the shape that's in your head, and never mind the one that's beforeyour eyes.' 'very well, i'll try it; but after i havelearned it can i depend on it. will it keep the same form and not go foolingaround?' before mr. bixby could answer, mr. w---- camein to take the watch, and

he said-- 'bixby, you'll have to look out for president'sisland and all that country clear away up above the old hen andchickens. the banks are caving and the shape of the shores changinglike everything. why, you wouldn't know the point above 40. youcan go up inside the old sycamore-snag, now.{footnote [1. it may notbe necessary, but still it can do no harm to explain that 'inside' meansbetween the snag and the shore.--m.t.]} so that question was answered. here were leaguesof shore changing

shape. my spirits were down in the mud again.two things seemed pretty apparent to me. one was, that in order tobe a pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowedto know; and the other was, that he must learn it all over againin a different way every twenty-four hours. that night we had the watch until twelve.now it was an ancient river custom for the two pilots to chat a bit whenthe watch changed. while the relieving pilot put on his gloves andlit his cigar, his partner, the retiring pilot, would say something likethis--

'i judge the upper bar is making down a littleat hale's point; had quarter twain with the lower lead and marktwain {footnote [two fathoms. 'quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms,thirteen-and-a-half feet. 'mark three' is three fathoms.]} with theother.' 'yes, i thought it was making down a little,last trip. meet any boats?' 'met one abreast the head of 21, but she wasaway over hugging the bar, and i couldn't make her out entirely.i took her for the "sunny south"--hadn't any skylights forward of thechimneys.' and so on. and as the relieving pilot tookthe wheel his

partner {footnote ['partner' is a technicalterm for 'the other pilot'.]} would mention that we were in such-and-sucha bend, and say we were abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yardor plantation. this was courtesy; i supposed it was necessity. butmr. w---- came on watch full twelve minutes late on this particular night,--atremendous breach of etiquette; in fact, it is the unpardonablesin among pilots. so mr. bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simplysurrendered the wheel and marched out of the pilot-house withouta word. i was appalled; it was a villainous night for blackness, we werein a particularly wide

and blind part of the river, where there wasno shape or substance to anything, and it seemed incredible that mr.bixby should have left that poor fellow to kill the boat trying to findout where he was. but i resolved that i would stand by him any way.he should find that he was not wholly friendless. so i stood around,and waited to be asked where we were. but mr. w---- plunged on serenelythrough the solid firmament of black cats that stood for an atmosphere,and never opened his mouth. here is a proud devil, thought i; here isa limb of satan that would rather send us all to destruction than puthimself under obligations to

me, because i am not yet one of the salt ofthe earth and privileged to snub captains and lord it over everythingdead and alive in a steamboat. i presently climbed up on the bench; i didnot think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunatic was on watch. however, i must have gone to sleep in thecourse of time, because the next thing i was aware of was the factthat day was breaking, mr. w----gone, and mr. bixby at the wheel again.so it was four o'clock and all well--but me; i felt like a skinful ofdry bones and all of them trying to ache at once.

mr. bixby asked me what i had stayed up therefor. i confessed that it was to do mr. w---- a benevolence,--tell himwhere he was. it took five minutes for the entire preposterousness ofthe thing to filter into mr. bixby's system, and then i judge it filledhim nearly up to the chin; because he paid me a compliment--and not muchof a one either. he said, 'well, taking you by-and-large, you do seemto be more different kinds of an ass than any creature i ever saw before.what did you suppose he wanted to know for?' i said i thought it might be a convenienceto him.

'convenience d-nation! didn't i tell you thata man's got to know the river in the night the same as he'd know hisown front hall?' 'well, i can follow the front hall in thedark if i know it is the front hall; but suppose you set me down in the middleof it in the dark and not tell me which hall it is; how am i toknow?' 'well you've got to, on the river!' 'all right. then i'm glad i never said anythingto mr. w----' 'i should say so. why, he'd have slammed youthrough the window and utterly ruined a hundred dollars' worth ofwindow-sash and stuff.'

i was glad this damage had been saved, forit would have made me unpopular with the owners. they always hatedanybody who had the name of being careless, and injuring things. i went to work now to learn the shape of theriver; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that everi tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief. i would fasten myeyes upon a sharp, wooded point that projected far into the river somemiles ahead of me, and go to laboriously photographing its shape uponmy brain; and just as i was beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, wewould draw up toward it and

the exasperating thing would begin to meltaway and fold back into the bank! if there had been a conspicuous deadtree standing upon the very point of the cape, i would find that treeinconspicuously merged into the general forest, and occupying the middleof a straight shore, when i got abreast of it! no prominent hill wouldstick to its shape long enough for me to make up my mind what itsform really was, but it was as dissolving and changeful as if it had beena mountain of butter in the hottest corner of the tropics. nothing everhad the same shape when i was coming downstream that it had bornewhen i went up. i mentioned

these little difficulties to mr. bixby. hesaid-- 'that's the very main virtue of the thing.if the shapes didn't change every three seconds they wouldn't be of anyuse. take this place where we are now, for instance. as long as thathill over yonder is only one hill, i can boom right along the way i'm going;but the moment it splits at the top and forms a v, i know i've gotto scratch to starboard in a hurry, or i'll bang this boat's brains outagainst a rock; and then the moment one of the prongs of the v swings behindthe other, i've got to waltz to larboard again, or i'll have a misunderstandingwith a snag

that would snatch the keelson out of thissteamboat as neatly as if it were a sliver in your hand. if that hill didn'tchange its shape on bad nights there would be an awful steamboat grave-yardaround here inside of a year.' it was plain that i had got to learn the shapeof the river in all the different ways that could be thought of,--upsidedown, wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and 'thortships,'--andthen know what to do on gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all.so i set about it. in the course of time i began to get the best ofthis knotty lesson, and my

self-complacency moved to the front once more.mr. bixby was all fixed, and ready to start it to the rear again. heopened on me after this fashion-- 'how much water did we have in the middlecrossing at hole-in-the-wall, trip before last?' i considered this an outrage. i said-- 'every trip, down and up, the leadsmen aresinging through that tangled place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch.how do you reckon i can remember such a mess as that?'

'my boy, you've got to remember it. you'vegot to remember the exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in whenwe had the shoalest water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal placesbetween st. louis and new orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal soundingsand marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings and marksof another, either, for they're not often twice alike. you must keepthem separate.' when i came to myself again, i said-- 'when i get so that i can do that, i'll beable to raise the dead, and then i won't have to pilot a steamboatto make a living. i want to

retire from this business. i want a slush-bucketand a brush; i'm only fit for a roustabout. i haven't got brainsenough to be a pilot; and if i had i wouldn't have strength enough tocarry them around, unless i went on crutches.' 'now drop that! when i say i'll learn {footnote['teach' is not in the river vocabulary.]} a man the river, i meanit. and you can depend on it, i'll learn him or kill him.' chapter 9 continued perplexities there was no use in arguing with a personlike this. i promptly put

such a strain on my memory that by and byeven the shoal water and the countless crossing-marks began to stay withme. but the result was just the same. i never could more than get oneknotty thing learned before another presented itself. now i had oftenseen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to read it as if it werea book; but it was a book that told me nothing. a time came atlast, however, when mr. bixby seemed to think me far enough advancedto bear a lesson on water-reading. so he began-- 'do you see that long slanting line on theface of the water? now,

that's a reef. moreover, it's a bluff reef.there is a solid sand-bar under it that is nearly as straight up anddown as the side of a house. there is plenty of water close up to it, butmighty little on top of it. if you were to hit it you would knock theboat's brains out. do you see where the line fringes out at the upper endand begins to fade away?' 'yes, sir.' 'well, that is a low place; that is the headof the reef. you can climb over there, and not hurt anything. cross over,now, and follow along close under the reef--easy water there--notmuch current.'

i followed the reef along till i approachedthe fringed end. then mr. bixby said-- 'now get ready. wait till i give the word.she won't want to mount the reef; a boat hates shoal water. stand by--wait--wait--keepher well in hand. now cramp her down! snatch her! snatchher!' he seized the other side of the wheel andhelped to spin it around until it was hard down, and then we held it so.the boat resisted, and refused to answer for a while, and next she came surgingto starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge ofwater foaming away from her

bows. 'now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'llget away from you. when she fights strong and the tiller slips a little,in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle; it is theway she tells you at night that the water is too shoal; but keep edgingher up, little by little, toward the point. you are well up on the bar,now; there is a bar under every point, because the water that comesdown around it forms an eddy and allows the sediment to sink. do you seethose fine lines on the face of the water that branch out like the ribsof a fan. well, those are

little reefs; you want to just miss the endsof them, but run them pretty close. now look out--look out! don'tyou crowd that slick, greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feetthere; she won't stand it. she begins to smell it; look sharp, i tellyou! oh blazes, there you go! stop the starboard wheel! quick! ship up toback! set her back! the engine bells jingled and the engines answeredpromptly, shooting white columns of steam far aloft out of the'scape pipes, but it was too late. the boat had 'smelt' the bar ingood earnest; the foamy ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared,a great dead swell

came rolling forward and swept ahead of her,she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing away toward theother shore as if she were about scared to death. we were a good milefrom where we ought to have been, when we finally got the upper hand ofher again. during the afternoon watch the next day, mr.bixby asked me if i knew how to run the next few miles. i said-- 'go inside the first snag above the point,outside the next one, start out from the lower end of higgins's wood-yard,make a square crossing and--'

'that's all right. i'll be back before youclose up on the next point.' but he wasn't. he was still below when i roundedit and entered upon a piece of river which i had some misgivingsabout. i did not know that he was hiding behind a chimney to see howi would perform. i went gaily along, getting prouder and prouder, for hehad never left the boat in my sole charge such a length of time before.i even got to 'setting' her and letting the wheel go, entirely, whilei vaingloriously turned my back and inspected the stem marks and hummeda tune, a sort of easy indifference which i had prodigiously admiredin bixby and other great

pilots. once i inspected rather long, andwhen i faced to the front again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenlythat if i hadn't clapped my teeth together i should have lost it. oneof those frightful bluff reefs was stretching its deadly length rightacross our bows! my head was gone in a moment; i did not know whichend i stood on; i gasped and could not get my breath; i spun the wheeldown with such rapidity that it wove itself together like a spider's web;the boat answered and turned square away from the reef, but thereef followed her! i fled, and still it followed, still it kept--right acrossmy bows! i never looked

to see where i was going, i only fled. theawful crash was imminent--why didn't that villain come! if i committed thecrime of ringing a bell, i might get thrown overboard. but better thatthan kill the boat. so in blind desperation i started such a rattling'shivaree' down below as never had astounded an engineer in this worldbefore, i fancy. amidst the frenzy of the bells the engines beganto back and fill in a furious way, and my reason forsook its throne--wewere about to crash into the woods on the other side of the river. justthen mr. bixby stepped calmly into view on the hurricane deck. my soul wentout to him in gratitude.

my distress vanished; i would have felt safeon the brink of niagara, with mr. bixby on the hurricane deck. he blandlyand sweetly took his tooth-pick out of his mouth between hisfingers, as if it were a cigar--we were just in the act of climbingan overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern likerats--and lifted up these commands to me ever so gently-- 'stop the starboard. stop the larboard. sether back on both.' the boat hesitated, halted, pressed her noseamong the boughs a critical instant, then reluctantly began to back away.

'stop the larboard. come ahead on it. stopthe starboard. come ahead on it. point her for the bar.' i sailed away as serenely as a summer's morningmr. bixby came in and said, with mock simplicity-- 'when you have a hail, my boy, you ought totap the big bell three times before you land, so that the engineers canget ready.' i blushed under the sarcasm, and said i hadn'thad any hail. 'ah! then it was for wood, i suppose. theofficer of the watch will tell you when he wants to wood up.'

i went on consuming and said i wasn't afterwood. 'indeed? why, what could you want over herein the bend, then? did you ever know of a boat following a bend up-streamat 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 onewithin three miles of where you were.' 'but i saw it. it was as bluff as that oneyonder.'

'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 saveher 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 underour bows i held my breath; but we slid over it like oil.

'now don't you see the difference? it wasn'tanything but a wind reef. the wind does that.' 'so i see. but it is exactly like a bluffreef. how am i ever going to tell them apart?' 'i can't tell you. it is an instinct. by andby you will just naturally know one from the other, but you never willbe able to explain why or how you know them apart' it turned out to be true. the face of thewater, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead languageto the uneducated

passenger, but which told its mind to me withoutreserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if ituttered them with a voice. and it was not a book to be read once andthrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. throughout the longtwelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest,never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one thatyou would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment insome other thing. there never was so wonderful a book written by man;never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkinglyrenewed with every

reperusal. the passenger who could not readit was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface(on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); butto the pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more thanthat, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shoutingexclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck ora rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vesselthat ever floated. it is the faintest and simplest expression the waterever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. in truth, the passengerwho could not read

this book saw nothing but all manner of prettypictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereasto the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmestand most dead-earnest of reading-matter. now when i had mastered the language of thiswater and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the greatriver as familiarly as i knew the letters of the alphabet, i had madea valuable acquisition. but i had lost something, too. i had lostsomething 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 keepin mind a certain wonderful sunset which i witnessed when steamboatingwas 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 asolitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long,slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface wasbroken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal;where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was coveredwith graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced;the shore on our left was

densely wooded, and the somber shadow thatfell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trailthat shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmeddead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in theunobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. there were gracefulcurves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over thewhole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enrichingit, 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 seenanything like this at home. but as i have said, a day came when i beganto cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon andthe sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another daycame when i ceased altogether to note them. then, if that sunset scene hadbeen repeated, i should have looked upon it without rapture, and shouldhave commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: this sun meansthat we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means thatthe river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the waterrefers to a bluff reef

which is going to kill somebody's steamboatone of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; thosetumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there;the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warningthat that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streakin the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he haslocated himself in the very best place he could have found to fish forsteamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is notgoing to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get throughthis blind place at night

without the friendly old landmark. no, the romance and the beauty were all gonefrom the river. all the value any feature of it had for me now wasthe amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe pilotingof a steamboat. since those days, i have pitied doctors from myheart. what does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctorbut a 'break' that ripples above some deadly disease. are not all hervisible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbolsof hidden decay? does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simplyview her professionally, and

comment upon her unwholesome condition allto himself? and doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained mostor lost most by learning his trade? chapter 10 completing my education whosoever has done me the courtesy to readmy chapters which have preceded this may possibly wonder that i dealso minutely with piloting as a science. it was the prime purpose ofthose chapters; and i am not quite done yet. i wish to show, in the mostpatient and painstaking way, what a wonderful science it is. ship channelsare buoyed and lighted,

and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertakingto learn to run them; clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms,change their channels very gradually, and therefore one needs tolearn them but once; but piloting becomes another matter when you applyit to vast streams like the mississippi and the missouri, whose alluvialbanks cave and change constantly, whose snags are always huntingup new quarters, whose sandbars are never at rest, whose channelsare for ever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions must be confrontedin all nights and all weathers without the aid of a single light-houseor a single buoy;

for there is neither light nor buoy to befound anywhere in all this three or four thousand miles of villainousriver.{footnote [true at the time referred to; not true now (1882).]} ifeel justified in enlarging upon this great science for the reason thati feel sure no one has ever yet written a paragraph about it who had piloteda steamboat himself, and so had a practical knowledge of the subject.if the theme were hackneyed, i should be obliged to deal gentlywith the reader; but since it is wholly new, i have felt at libertyto take up a considerable degree of room with it.

when i had learned the name and position ofevery visible feature of the river; when i had so mastered its shape thati could shut my eyes and trace it from st. louis to new orleans; wheni had learned to read the face of the water as one would cull the newsfrom the morning paper; and finally, when i had trained my dull memoryto treasure up an endless array of soundings and crossing-marks, andkeep fast hold of them, i judged that my education was complete: soi got to tilting my cap to the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pickin my mouth at the wheel. mr. bixby had his eye on these airs. one day hesaid--

'what is the height of that bank yonder, atburgess's?' 'how can i tell, sir. it is three-quartersof a mile away.' 'very poor eye--very poor. take the glass.' i took the glass, and presently said--'i can'ttell. 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 thingsthat it tells you. for one thing, it tells you the stage of theriver--tells you whether there's more water or less in the river alonghere than there was last trip.' 'the leads tell me that.' i rather thoughti had the advantage of him there. 'yes, but suppose the leads lie? the bankwould tell you so, and then you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. therewas 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 itwas 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-woodfloating down the stream.' 'a rise starts the drift-wood, but then itkeeps on floating a while after the river is done rising. now the bankwill tell you about this.

wait till you come to a place where it shelvesa little. now here; do you see this narrow belt of fine sedimentthat was deposited while the water was higher. you see the driftwood beginsto strand, too. the bank helps in other ways. do you see that stumpon the false point?' 'ay, ay, sir.' 'well, the water is just up to the roots ofit. you must make a note of that.' 'because that means that there's seven feetin the chute of 103.' 'but 103 is a long way up the river yet.'

'that's where the benefit of the bank comesin. there is water enough in 103 now, yet there may not be by the timewe get there; but the bank will keep us posted all along. you don't runclose chutes on a falling river, up-stream, and there are precious fewof them that you are allowed to run at all down-stream. there'sa law of the united states against it. the river may be rising by thetime we get to 103, and in that case we'll run it. we are drawing--howmuch?' 'six feet aft,--six and a half forward.' 'well, you do seem to know something.'

'but what i particularly want to know is,if i have got to keep up an everlasting measuring of the banks of thisriver, twelve hundred miles, month in and month out?' 'of course!' my emotions were too deep for words for awhile. presently i said--' and how about these chutes. are there manyof them?' 'i should say so. i fancy we shan't run anyof the river this trip as you've ever seen it run before--so to speak.if the river begins to rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you'vealways seen standing out of

the river, high and dry like the roof of ahouse; we'll cut across low places that you've never noticed at all, rightthrough the middle of bars that cover three hundred acres of river;we'll creep through cracks where you've always thought was solid land;we'll dart through the woods and leave twenty-five miles of river off toone side; we'll see the hind-side of every island between new orleansand cairo.' 'then i've got to go to work and learn justas much more river as i already know.' 'just about twice as much more, as near asyou can come at it.'

'well, one lives to find out. i think i wasa fool when i went into this business.' 'yes, that is true. and you are yet. but you'llnot be when you've learned it.' 'ah, i never can learn it.' 'i will see that you do.' by and by i ventured again-- 'have i got to learn all this thing just asi know the rest of the river--shapes and all--and so i can run itat night?'

'yes. and you've got to have good fair marksfrom one end of the river to the other, that will help the bank tellyou when there is water enough in each of these countless places--likethat stump, you know. when the river first begins to rise, you canrun half a dozen of the deepest of them; when it rises a foot moreyou can run another dozen; the next foot will add a couple of dozen,and so on: so you see you have to know your banks and marks to a dead moralcertainty, and never get them mixed; for when you start through oneof those cracks, there's no backing out again, as there is in the bigriver; you've got to go

through, or stay there six months if you getcaught on a falling river. there are about fifty of these cracks whichyou can't run at all except when the river is brim full and over the banks.' 'this new lesson is a cheerful prospect.' 'cheerful enough. and mind what i've justtold you; when you start into one of those places you've got to go through.they are too narrow to turn around in, too crooked to back out of,and the shoal water is always up at the head; never elsewhere. andthe head of them is always likely to be filling up, little by little,so that the marks you reckon

their depth by, this season, may not answerfor next.' 'learn a new set, then, every year?' 'exactly. cramp her up to the bar! what areyou standing up through the middle of the river for?' the next few months showed me strange things.on the same day that we held the conversation above narrated, we meta great rise coming down the river. the whole vast face of the streamwas black with drifting dead logs, broken boughs, and great treesthat had caved in and been washed away. it required the nicest steeringto pick one's way through

this rushing raft, even in the day-time, whencrossing from point to point; and at night the difficulty was mightilyincreased; every now and then a huge log, lying deep in the water,would suddenly appear right under our bows, coming head-on; no use totry to avoid it then; we could only stop the engines, and one wheel wouldwalk over that log from one end to the other, keeping up a thunderingracket and careening the boat in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers.now and then we would hit one of these sunken logs a rattlingbang, dead in the center, with a full head of steam, and it would stunthe boat as if she had hit

a continent. sometimes this log would lodge,and stay right across our nose, and back the mississippi up beforeit; we would have to do a little craw-fishing, then, to get away fromthe obstruction. we often hit white logs, in the dark, for we couldnot see them till we were right on them; but a black log is a prettydistinct object at night. a white snag is an ugly customer when the daylightis gone. of course, on the great rise, down came aswarm of prodigious timber-rafts from the head waters of the mississippi,coal barges from pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere,and broad-horns from

'posey county,' indiana, freighted with 'fruitand furniture'--the usual term for describing it, though in plainenglish the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins. pilotsbore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returned with usury.the law required all such helpless traders to keep a light burning,but it was a law that was often broken. all of a sudden, on a murkynight, a light would hop up, right under our bows, almost, and an agonizedvoice, with the backwoods 'whang' to it, would wail out-- 'whar'n the ---- you goin' to! cain't yousee nothin', you dash-dashed

aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed sonof a stuffed monkey!' then for an instant, as we whistled by, thered glare from our furnaces would reveal the scow and the form of thegesticulating orator as if under a lightning-flash, and in that instantour firemen and deck-hands would send and receive a tempest of missilesand profanity, one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing fragmentsof a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness would shut again.and that flatboatman would be sure to go into new orleans and sue our boat,swearing stoutly that he had a light burning all the time, when intruth his gang had the lantern

down below to sing and lie and drink and gambleby, and no watch on deck. once, at night, in one of those forest-borderedcrevices (behind an island) which steamboatmen intensely describewith the phrase 'as dark as the inside of a cow,' we should haveeaten up a posey county family, fruit, furniture, and all, but thatthey happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caught the sound ofthe music in time to sheer off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately,but coming so near it that we had good hopes for a moment. these peoplebrought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we backed and filledto get away, the precious

family stood in the light of it--both sexesand various ages--and cursed us till everything turned blue. once a coalboatmansent a bullet through our pilot-house, when we borrowed a steeringoar of him in a very narrow place. chapter 11 the river rises during this big rise these small-fry craftwere an intolerable nuisance. we were running chute after chute,--a newworld to me,--and if there was a particularly cramped place in a chute, wewould be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn there; and if he failed to bethere, we would find him in a

still worse locality, namely, the head ofthe chute, on the shoal water. and then there would be no end of profanecordialities exchanged. sometimes, in the big river, when we wouldbe feeling our way cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenlybe broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant alog raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil, close upon us; andthen we did not wait to swap knives, but snatched our engine bells outby the roots and piled on all the steam we had, to scramble out of the way!one doesn't hit a rock or a solid log craft with a steamboat when hecan get excused.

you will hardly believe it, but many steamboatclerks always carried a large assortment of religious tracts withthem in those old departed steamboating days. indeed they did. twentytimes a day we would be cramping up around a bar, while a string ofthese small-fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the bendaway above and beyond us a couple of miles. now a skiff would dart awayfrom one of them, and come fighting its laborious way across the desertof water. it would 'ease all,' in the shadow of our forecastle, andthe panting oarsmen would shout, 'gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff driftedswiftly astern. the

clerk would throw over a file of new orleansjournals. if these were picked up without comment, you might noticethat now a dozen other skiffs had been drifting down upon us withoutsaying anything. you understand, they had been waiting to see howno. 1 was going to fare. no. 1 making no comment, all the rest wouldbend to their oars and come on, now; and as fast as they came theclerk would heave over neat bundles of religious tracts, tied toshingles. the amount of hard swearing which twelve packages of religiousliterature will command when impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen'screws, who have pulled a

heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to getthem, is simply incredible. as i have said, the big rise brought a newworld under my vision. by the time the river was over its banks we had forsakenour old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that had stood tenfeet out of water before; we were shaving stumpy shores, like that atthe foot of madrid bend, which i had always seen avoided before; wewere clattering through chutes like that of 82, where the openingat the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our nose was almost atthe very spot. some of these chutes were utter solitudes. the dense, untouchedforest overhung both

banks of the crooked little crack, and onecould believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.the swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we sweptby, the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops ofdead trunks, and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage,were wasted and thrown away there. the chutes were lovely places to steerin; they were deep, except at the head; the current was gentle; underthe 'points' the water was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks sobluff that where the tender willow thickets projected you could bury yourboat's broadside in them

as you tore along, and then you seemed fairlyto fly. behind other islands we found wretched littlefarms, and wretcheder little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fencessticking a foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad,chills-racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top-rail,elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharging theresult at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth; whilethe rest of the family and the few farm-animals were huddled togetherin an empty wood-flat riding at her moorings close at hand. in this flat-boatthe family would have

to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser orgreater number of days (or possibly weeks), until the river should falltwo or three feet and let them get back to their log-cabin and theirchills again--chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise providenceto enable them to take exercise without exertion. and this sort ofwatery camping out was a thing which these people were rather liableto be treated to a couple of times a year: by the december rise outof the ohio, and the june rise out of the mississippi. and yet these werekindly dispensations, for they at least enabled the poor things to risefrom the dead now and

then, and look upon life when a steamboatwent by. they appreciated the blessing, too, for they spread their mouthsand eyes wide open and made the most of these occasions. now what couldthese banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the bluesduring the low-water season! once, in one of these lovely island chutes,we found our course completely bridged by a great fallen tree.this will serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were. the passengershad an hour's recreation in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-handschopped the bridge away; for there was no such thing as turning back,you comprehend.

from cairo to baton rouge, when the riveris over its banks, you have no particular trouble in the night, for thethousand-mile wall of dense forest that guards the two banks all the wayis only gapped with a farm or wood-yard opening at intervals, and soyou can't 'get out of the river' much easier than you could get outof a fenced lane; but from baton rouge to new orleans it is a differentmatter. the river is more than a mile wide, and very deep--as much astwo hundred feet, in places. both banks, for a good deal over a hundredmiles, are shorn of their timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations,with only here and

there a scattering sapling or row of ornamentalchina-trees. the timber is shorn off clear to the rear of the plantations,from two to four miles. when the first frost threatens to come,the planters snatch off their crops in a hurry. when they have finishedgrinding the cane, they form the refuse of the stalks (which theycall bagasse) into great piles and set fire to them, though in other sugarcountries the bagasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugarmills. now the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like satan'sown kitchen. an embankment ten or fifteen feet high guardsboth banks of the

mississippi all the way down that lower endof the river, and this embankment is set back from the edge of theshore from ten to perhaps a hundred feet, according to circumstances;say thirty or forty feet, as a general thing. fill that whole region withan impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagassepiles, when the river is over the banks, and turn a steamboat loosealong there at midnight and see how she will feel. and see how you willfeel, too! you find yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea thatis shoreless, that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances;for you cannot discern

the thin rib of embankment, and you are alwaysimagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. the plantationsthemselves are transformed by the smoke, and look like apart of the sea. all through your watch you are tortured with the exquisitemisery of uncertainty. you hope you are keeping in the river, butyou do not know. all that you are sure about is that you are likely to bewithin six feet of the bank and destruction, when you think you are agood half-mile from shore. and you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenlyto fetch up against the embankment and topple your chimneys overboard,you will have the small

comfort of knowing that it is about what youwere expecting to do. one of the great vicksburg packets darted outinto a sugar plantation one night, at such a time, and had to stay therea week. but there was no novelty about it; it had often been done before. i thought i had finished this chapter, buti wish to add a curious thing, while it is in my mind. it is onlyrelevant in that it is connected with piloting. there used to bean excellent pilot on the river, a mr. x., who was a somnambulist. itwas said that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of river, hewas pretty sure to get up

and walk in his sleep and do strange things.he was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two with george ealer, on agreat new orleans passenger packet. during a considerable part of thefirst trip george was uneasy, but got over it by and by, as x. seemed contentto stay in his bed when asleep. late one night the boat was approachinghelena, arkansas; the water was low, and the crossing above thetown in a very blind and tangled condition. x. had seen the crossingsince ealer had, and as the night was particularly drizzly, sullen, anddark, ealer was considering whether he had not better have x. called toassist in running the place,

when the door opened and x. walked in. nowon very dark nights, light is a deadly enemy to piloting; you are awarethat if you stand in a lighted room, on such a night, you cannot see thingsin the street to any purpose; but if you put out the lights andstand in the gloom you can make out objects in the street pretty well.so, on very dark nights, pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire inthe pilot-house stove if there is a crack which can allow the leastray to escape; they order the furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulinsand the sky-lights to be closely blinded. then no light whateverissues from the boat. the

undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-househad mr. x.'s voice. this said-- 'let me take her, george; i've seen this placesince you have, and it is so crooked that i reckon i can run it myselfeasier than i could tell you how to do it.' 'it is kind of you, and i swear _i_ am willing.i haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me. i have beenspinning around and around the wheel like a squirrel. it is so dark ican't tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around like awhirligig.'

so ealer took a seat on the bench, pantingand breathless. the black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stoodat ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as gently andas sweetly as if the time had been noonday. when ealer observed thismarvel of steering, he wished he had not confessed! he stared, and wondered,and finally said-- 'well, i thought i knew how to steer a steamboat,but that was another mistake of mine.' x. said nothing, but went serenely on withhis work. he rang for the

leads; he rang to slow down the steam; heworked the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks, then stood atthe center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness,fore and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled more and more,he stopped the engines entirely, and the dead silence and suspenseof 'drifting' followed when the shoalest water was struck, he crackedon the steam, carried her handsomely over, and then began to work herwarily into the next system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedfuluse of leads and engines followed, the boat slipped through withouttouching bottom, and entered

upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing;imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by inchesinto her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried,and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging overthe reef and away into deep water and safety! ealer let his long-pent breath pour out ina great, relieving sigh, and 'that's the sweetest piece of piloting thatwas ever done on the mississippi river! i wouldn't believed itcould be done, if i hadn't seen it.'

there was no reply, and he added-- 'just hold her five minutes longer, partner,and let me run down and get a cup of coffee.' a minute later ealer was biting into a pie,down in the 'texas,' and comforting himself with coffee. just thenthe night watchman happened in, and was about to happen out again, whenhe noticed ealer and exclaimed-- 'who is at the wheel, sir?' 'x.'

'dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!' the next moment both men were flying up thepilot-house companion way, three steps at a jump! nobody there! the greatsteamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweetwill! the watchman shot out of the place again; ealer seized the wheel,set an engine back with power, and held his breath while the boatreluctantly swung away from a 'towhead' which she was about to knock intothe middle of the gulf of mexico! by and by the watchman came back and said--

'didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep,when he first came up here?' 'no.' 'well, he was. i found him walking along ontop of the railings just as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement;and i put him to bed; now just this minute there he was again, awayastern, going through that sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as before.' 'well, i think i'll stay by, next time hehas one of those fits. but i hope he'll have them often. you just oughtto have seen him take this

boat through helena crossing. i never sawanything so gaudy before. and if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpinpiloting when he is sound asleep, what couldn't he do ifhe was dead!'