“Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing 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’ve got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water,
in every one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New
Orleans; and you mustn’t get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip
mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for
they’re not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.”
When I came to myself again, I said:
“When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead, and
then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to
retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only
fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if
I had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around unless I went
on crutches.”
“Now, drop that! When I say I’ll learn a man the river, I mean it. And
you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”