A Cub-pilot's Experience
WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other
delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making
the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get
acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the
boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever
for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came. It
was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,
and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.{footnote [1.
'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]}
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be likely
to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the
other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not
suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could
afford to wait for a ship. Therefore it followed that I must contrive
a new career. The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis. I planned
a siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he
surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the
first wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small
enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had
really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not
have had the courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do was
to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that could be
much of a trick, since it was so wide.
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it
was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, 'straightened her
up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the
Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her; shave those steamships as close
as you'd peel an apple.' I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered
up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the side off every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath
and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such
peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide
margin of safety intervening between the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and
within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was
going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage
of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said
he, 'This is Six-Mile Point.' I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, 'This
is Nine-Mile Point.' Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.' They
were all about level with the water's edge; they all looked about alike
to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would
change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say: 'The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At
midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman
said--
'Come! turn out!'
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;
so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon
the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed.
I said:--
'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the
night for. Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.'
The watchman said--
'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.'
The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter
from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman! an't the new cub turned
out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send
for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.'
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute
later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on
and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here
was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night
to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to
me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had
imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this
new phase of it.
It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.
The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star
and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on
either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed
wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:--
'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.'
The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, I wish you joy
of your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr. Jones's
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never _will _find it as
long as you live.
Mr. Bixby said to the mate:--
'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?'
'Upper.'
'I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage: It's no
great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with that.'
'All right, sir. If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it, I
reckon.'
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation on
such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I dreadfully
wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many short answers
as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I desired
to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass enough to
really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night when all
plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I held in. I
used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing--
'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:--
'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
'Don't _know_?'
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.
'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the
_next_ point?'
Once more I didn't know.
'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of _any _point or place I
told you.'
I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.
'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'
'I--I--don't know.'
'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What
_do_ you know?'
'I--I--nothing, for certain.'
'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down a
lane.'
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one
side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a
while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?'
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation
provoked me to say:--
'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing
the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because he ran
over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up
a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby
was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who would
_talk back_. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an
irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther
away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice
and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was
empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught
curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way--
'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a pilot,
and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just
like A B C.'
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged long.
I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless Mr.
Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few
strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was
as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I
was not entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck--
'What's this, sir?'
'Jones's plantation.'
I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it
isn't. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the
engine bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a torch
glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the
bank said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we
were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply awhile,
and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the finding of that plantation was
the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't happen again
in a hundred years.' And I fully believed it was an accident, too.
By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had
learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight,
and before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in
night-work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled
with the names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.;
but the information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was
in my head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the
river set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on,
day and night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time
I had slept since the voyage began.
My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I
packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I
stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed
perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and
aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the
little 'Paul Jones' a large craft. There were other differences, too.
The 'Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap,
cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to
have a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit,
to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores'
instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth
on the floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my
head, costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs
for the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' to bring
up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this
was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once more to believe
that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we
were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself
with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I
looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a
splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter,
on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed
chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and
the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.
The boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as
spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and
there was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down
there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaring
from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers!
This was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines--but enough of this. I had
never felt so fine before. And when I found that the regiment of natty
servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete.