The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until sometime after
the young pilot has been “standing his own watch” alone and under the
staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the
position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted
with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is
_his_ courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out
and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man’s.
He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he
is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a
sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore, pilots wisely train these
cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon
the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used
to blush, even in my sleep, when I thought of it. I had become a good
steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,
night and day. Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did
was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of
leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any
crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I
should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the _daytime_, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer’s day I was bowling down the
bend above Island 66, brim full of self-conceit and carrying my nose as
high as a giraffe’s, when Mr. Bixby said:
“I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?”
This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest
crossing in the whole river. One couldn’t come to any harm, whether he
ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom
there. I knew all this perfectly well.
“Know how to _run_ it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.”
“How much water is there in it?”
“Well, that is an odd question. I couldn’t get bottom there with a
church steeple.”
“You think so, do you?”
The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr.
Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything more. I began to
imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent
somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the
leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and
then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could
observe results. Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane
deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a
straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of the
island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my
nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across, the
captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness in his
voice:
“Where is Mr. Bixby?”
“Gone below, sir.”
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to construct
dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the
run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of
coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every
joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the
bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more;
clutched it tremblingly once again, and pulled it so feebly that I could
hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and
both together:
“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!” This was another shock. I
began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get the
boat started to port before I would see new dangers on that side, and
away I would spin to the other; only to find perils accumulating to
starboard, and be crazy to get to port again. Then came the leadsman’s
sepulchral cry:
“D-e-e-p four!”
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath
away.
“M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less-three! Half twain!”
This was frightful! I seized the bell-rope and stopped the engines.
“Quarter twain! Quarter twain! _Mark_ twain!”
I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking
from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck
out so far.
“Quarter-_less_-twain! Nine-and-a-half!”
We were _drawing_ nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could
not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and
shouted to the engineer:
“Oh, Ben, if you love me, _back_ her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal
_soul_ out of her!”
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood Mr.
Bixby, smiling, a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane
deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now,
and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the
lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said:
“It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, _wasn’t_ it? I suppose I’ll
never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the
head of 66.”
“Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t; for I want you to
learn something by that experience. Didn’t you know there was no bottom
in that crossing?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody else to shake
your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And another
thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don’t turn coward. That
isn’t going to help matters any.”
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the
hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, “Oh, Ben, if
you love me, back her!”
_FROM_ “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” (1877–80)