Piloting was only a part of Sam Clemens's education on the Mississippi.
He learned as much of the reefs and shallows of human nature as of the
river-bed. In one place he writes:
In that brief, sharp schooling I got personally and familiarly
acquainted with all the different types of human nature that are to
be found in fiction, biography, or history.
All the different types, but most of them in the rough. That Samuel
Clemens kept the promise made to his mother as to drink and cards during
those apprentice days is well worth remembering.
Horace Bixby, answering a call for pilots from the Missouri River,
consigned his pupil, as was customary, tonne of the pilots of the "John
J. Roe," a freight-boat, owned and conducted by some retired farmers, and
in its hospitality reminding Sam of his Uncle John Quarles's farm. The
"Roe" was a very deliberate boat. It was said that she could beat an
island to St. Louis, but never quite overtake the current going
down-stream. Sam loved the "Roe." She was not licensed to carry
passengers, but she always had a family party of the owners' relations
aboard, and there was a big deck for dancing and a piano in the cabin.
The young pilot could play the chords, and sing, in his own fashion,
about a grasshopper that; sat on a sweet-potato vine, and about--
An old, old horse whose name was Methusalem,
Took him down and sold him in Jerusalem,
A long time ago.
The "Roe" was a heavenly place, but Sam's stay there did not last. Bixby
came down from the Missouri, and perhaps thought he was doing a fine
thing for his pupil by transferring him to a pilot named Brown, then on a
large passenger-steamer, the "Pennsylvania." The "Pennsylvania" was new
and one of the finest boats on the river. Sam Clemens, by this time, was
accounted a good steersman, so it seemed fortunate and a good arrangement
for all parties.
But Brown was a tyrant. He was illiterate and coarse, and took a dislike
to Sam from the start. His first greeting was a question, harmless
enough in form but offensive in manner.
"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?"--Bixby being usually pronounced "Bigsby"
in river parlance.
Sam answered politely enough that he was, and Brown proceeded to comment
on the "style" of his clothes and other personal matters.
He had made an effort to please Brown, but it was no use. Brown was
never satisfied. At a moment when Sam was steering, Brown, sitting on
the bench, would shout: "Here! Where are you going now? Pull her down!
Pull her down! Do you hear me? Blamed mud-cat!"
The young pilot soon learned to detest his chief, and presently was
putting in a good deal of his time inventing punishments for him.
I could imagine myself killing Brown; there was no law against that, and
that was the thing I always used to do the moment I was abed. Instead of
going over the river in my mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside
for pleasure, and killed Brown.
He gave up trying to please Brown, and was even willing to stir him up
upon occasion. One day when the cub was at the wheel his chief noticed
that the course seemed peculiar.
"Here! Where you headin' for now?" he yelled. "What in the nation you
steerin' at, anyway? Blamed numskull!"
"Why," said Sam in his calm, slow way, "I didn't see much else I could
steer for, so I was heading for that white heifer on the bank."
"Get away from that wheel! And get outen this pilot-house!" yelled
Brown. "You ain't fitten to become no pilot!" An order that Sam found
welcome enough. The other pilot, George Ealer, was a lovable soul who
played the flute and chess during his off watch, and read aloud to Sam
from "Goldsmith" and "Shakespeare." To be with George Ealer was to
forget the persecutions of Brown.
Young Clemens had been on the river nearly a year at this time, and,
though he had learned a good deal and was really a fine steersman, he
received no wages. He had no board to pay, but there were things he must
buy, and his money supply had become limited. Each trip of the
"Pennsylvania" she remained about two days and nights in New Orleans,
during which time the young man was free. He found he could earn two and
a half to three dollars a night watching freight on the levee, and, as
this opportunity came around about once a month, the amount was useful.
Nor was this the only return; many years afterward he said:
"It was a desolate experience, watching there in the dark, among
those piles of freight; not a sound, not a living creature astir.
But it was not a profitless one. I used to have inspirations as I
sat there alone those nights. I used to imagine all sots of
situations and possibilities. These things got into my books by and
by, and furnished me with many a chapter. I can trace the effects
of those nights through most of my books, in one way and another."
Piloting, even with Brown, had its pleasant side. In St. Louis, young
Clemens stopped with his sister, and often friends were there from
Hannibal. At both ends of the line he visited friendly boats, especially
the "Roe," where a grand welcome was always waiting. Once among the
guests of that boat a young girl named Laura so attracted him that he
forgot time and space until one of the "Roe" pilots, Zeb Leavenworth,
came flying aft, shouting:
"The 'Pennsylvania' is backing out!"
A hasty good-by, a wild flight across the decks of several boats, and a
leap across several feet of open water closed the episode. He wrote to
Laura, but there was no reply. He never saw her again, never heard from
her for nearly fifty years, when both were widowed and old. She had not
received his letter.
Occasionally there were stirring adventures aboard the "Pennsylvania."
In a letter written in March, 1858, the young pilot tells of an exciting
night search in the running ice for Hat Island soundings:
Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow with an oar, to keep her head out, and
I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well until
the yawl would bring us on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would
drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the
bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half
an inch thick on the oars . . . . The next day was colder still. I
was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal
steamboat came near running over us . . . . The "Maria Denning" was
aground at the head of the island; they hailed us; we ran alongside, and
they hoisted us in and thawed us out. We had been out in the yawl from
four in the morning until half-past nine without being near a fire.
There was a thick coating of ice over men and yawl, ropes, and
everything, and we looked like rock-candy statuary.
He was at the right age to enjoy such adventures, and to feel a pride in
them. In the same letter he tells how he found on the "Pennsylvania" a
small clerkship for his brother Henry, who was now nearly twenty, a
handsome, gentle boy of whom Sam was lavishly fond and proud. The young
pilot was eager to have Henry with him--to see him started in life. How
little he dreamed what sorrow would come of his well-meant efforts in the
lad's behalf! Yet he always believed, later, that he had a warning, for
one night at the end of May, in St. Louis, he had a vivid dream, which
time would presently fulfil.
An incident now occurred on the "Pennsylvania" that closed Samuel
Clemens's career on that boat. It was the down trip, and the boat was in
Eagle Bend when Henry Clemens appeared on the hurricane deck with an
announcement from the captain of a landing a little lower down. Brown,
who would never own that he was rather deaf, probably misunderstood the
order. They were passing the landing when the captain appeared on the
deck.
"Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" he called to Brown.
"No, sir."