Life On The Mississippi, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Life On The Mississippi, Complete


What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing which is
still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It must have
been all of fifteen minutes--fifteen minutes of dull, homesick
silence--before that long horse-face swung round upon me again--and
then, what a change! It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was
working. Now came this shriek--

'Here!--You going to set there all day?'

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric
suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,
apologetically:--'I have had no orders, sir.'

'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have ORDERS!
Our father was a GENTLEMAN--owned slaves--and we've been to SCHOOL. Yes,
WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS, is it? ORDERS
is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to swell yourself
up and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS! G'way from the
wheel!' (I had approached it without knowing it.)

I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses
stupefied by this frantic assault.

'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to the
texas-tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!'

The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said--

'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?'

'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the
pantry.'

'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.'

I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he shouted--

'Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw--ain't even got sense
enough to load up a stove.'

All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the
subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months. As I
have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The moment
I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those
yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to
spit out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say--

'Here! Take the wheel.'

Two minutes later--

'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!'

After another moment--

'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go--meet her! meet her!'

Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me, and meet
her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.

George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was having good times now;
for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie
had steeled for Brown the season before; consequently he knew exactly
how to entertain himself and plague me, all by the one operation.
Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would
sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of
'Snatch her! snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where you
going NOW? Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN! Don't you hear
me? Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected! I TOLD you not
to cramp that reef. G'way from the wheel!'

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was; and
sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgering was
pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.

I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub had
to take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and
criticism; and we all believed that there was a United States law making
it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty.
However, I could IMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against
that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was
abed. Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw
business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every
night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and
picturesque ones;--ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of
design and ghastliness of situation and environment.

Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault; and if he could
find no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would scold you for
shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, and for not
hugging it; for 'pulling down' when not invited, and for not pulling
down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and for waiting
FOR orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with
EVERYTHING you did; and another invariable rule of his was to throw all
his remarks (to you) into the form of an insult.

One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden.
Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other,
standing by to 'pull down' or 'shove up.' He cast a furtive glance at me
every now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he was
trying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going to
take. By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual
snarly way--

'Here!--See if you've got gumption enough to round her to.'

This was simply BOUND to be a success; nothing could prevent it; for
he had never allowed me to round the boat to before; consequently, no
matter how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with it. He
stood back there with his greedy eye on me, and the result was what
might have been foreseen: I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and
didn't know what I was about; I started too early to bring the boat
around, but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and corrected
my mistake; I started around once more while too high up, but corrected
myself again in time; I made other false moves, and still managed to
save myself; but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I tumbled
into the very worst blunder of all--I got too far down before beginning
to fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was come.

His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled me across
the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel down, and began to
pour out a stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he was out
of breath. In the course of this speech he called me all the different
kinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice I thought he
was even going to swear--but he didn't this time. 'Dod dern' was the
nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been brought
up with a wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone.

That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience on the
hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night, I killed Brown in
seventeen different ways--all of them new.




Chapter 19 Brown and I Exchange Compliments

Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering; I was
'pulling down.' My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck, and
shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below.
Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that was his
way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk. The wind
was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretended he wasn't),
and I very much doubted if he had heard the order. If I had two heads,
I would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemed judicious to take
care of it; so I kept still.

Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation. Captain
Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said--

'Let her come around, sir, let her come around. Didn't Henry tell you to
land here?'

'NO, sir!'

'I sent him up to do, it.'

'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned fool.
He never said anything.'

'Didn't YOU hear him?' asked the captain of me.

Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business, but there was
no way to avoid it; so I said--

'Yes, sir.'

I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was--

'Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.'

I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later, Henry
entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on. He was a
thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I knew
Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began, straightway--

'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?'

'I did tell you, Mr. Brown.'

'It's a lie!'

I said--

'You lie, yourself. He did tell you.'

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment
he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me--

'I'll attend to your case in half a minute!' then to Henry, 'And you
leave the pilot-house; out with you!'

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and even had
his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden
access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang after him;
but I was between, with a heavy stool, and I hit Brown a good honest
blow which stretched-him out.

I had committed the crime of crimes--I had lifted my hand against a
pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and
couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long account
with this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to him and
pounded him with my fists a considerable time--I do not know how long,
the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;--but
in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a
very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat
tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody
at the helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full
stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering
herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was
only luck--a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods.

Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger, Brown
gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of
the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster. But I was not afraid of
him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I
reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English,
calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard
dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted.
He could have done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere
vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species of
controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel,
muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench. The racket
had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I
saw the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd. I said
to myself, 'Now I AM done for!'--For although, as a rule, he was so
fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family, and so patient of minor
shortcomings, he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it.

I tried to imagine what he WOULD do to a cub pilot who had been guilty
of such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly
freight and alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I thought
I would go and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide ashore. So
I slipped out of the pilot-house, and down the steps, and around to
the texas door--and was in the act of gliding within, when the captain
confronted me! I dropped my head, and he stood over me in silence a
moment or two, then said impressively--

'Follow me.'

I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forward end
of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved
slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down; I stood before
him. He looked at me some little time, then said--

'So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?'

I answered meekly--

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you know that that is a very serious matter?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully five
minutes with no one at the wheel?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you strike him first?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What with?'

'A stool, sir.'

'Hard?'

'Middling, sir.'

'Did it knock him down?'

'He--he fell, sir.'

'Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What did you do?'

'Pounded him, sir.'

'Pounded him?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you pound him much?--that is, severely?'

'One might call it that, sir, maybe.'

'I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that. You
have been guilty of a great crime; and don't you ever be guilty of it
again, on this boat. BUT--lay for him ashore! Give him a good sound
thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses. Now go--and mind you, not
a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!--you've been guilty of a
great crime, you whelp!'

I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty
deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat
thighs after I had closed his door.

When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain, who was
talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded that I be
put ashore in New Orleans--and added--

'I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.'

The captain said--

'But he needn't come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.

'I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has got to go
ashore.'

'Very well,' said the captain, 'let it be yourself;' and resumed his
talk with the passengers.

During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave
feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings,
I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two
bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess
with him--and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back
his last move and ran the game out differently.




Chapter 20 A Catastrophe

WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in
finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight
watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer. But I was afraid; I
had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I believed I should
be sure to get into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the
boat in a near cut through some bar or other. Brown remained in his
place; but he would not travel with me. So the captain gave me an order
on the captain of the 'A. T. Lacey,' for a passage to St. Louis, and
said he would find a new pilot there and my steersman's berth could
then be resumed. The 'Lacey' was to leave a couple of days after the
'Pennsylvania.'

The night before the 'Pennsylvania' left, Henry and I sat chatting on
a freight pile on the levee till midnight. The subject of the chat,
mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before--steamboat
disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as we suspected it;
the water which was to make the steam which should cause it, was washing
past some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;--but
it would arrive at the right time and the right place. We doubted if
persons not clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster
and attendant panic; still, they might be of SOME use; so we decided
that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at least
stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance might throw in
the way. Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came, and
acted accordingly.

The 'Lacey' started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsylvania.' We
touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out, and somebody
shouted--

'The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred and fifty
lives lost!'

At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra, issued by a
Memphis paper, which gave some particulars. It mentioned my brother, and
said he was not hurt.

Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother was again
mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help. We did not get
full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the
sorrowful story--

It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 'Pennsylvania' was
creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below Memphis on
a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fast being emptied.
George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think; the second engineer
and a striker had the watch in the engine room; the second mate had
the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were
asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the carpenter, the
chief mate, and one striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the barber's
chair, and the barber was preparing to shave him. There were a good many
cabin passengers aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers--so
it was said at the time--and not very many of them were astir. The wood
being nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to 'come ahead' full
steam, and the next moment four of the eight boilers exploded with a
thunderous crash, and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted
toward the sky! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped
upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish--and
then, after a little, fire broke out.

Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the
river; among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter. The
carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struck the water
seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot, and George Black,
chief clerk, were never seen or heard of after the explosion. The
barber's chair, with Captain Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with
its back overhanging vacancy--everything forward of it, floor and all,
had disappeared; and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt,
stood with one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather
unconsciously, and saying, not a word.

When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of him, he
knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the lapels of his
coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep this protection in
its place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth. He had ample
time to attend to these details while he was going up and returning. He
presently landed on top of the unexploded boilers, forty feet below the
former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheel and a rain of other stuff,
and enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam. All of the many who breathed
that steam, died; none escaped. But Ealer breathed none of it. He made
his way to the free air as quickly as he could; and when the steam
cleared away he returned and climbed up on the boilers again, and
patiently hunted out each and every one of his chessmen and the several
joints of his flute.

By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks and groans
filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded, a great many
crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbar through one man's
body--I think they said he was a priest. He did not die at once, and his
sufferings were very dreadful. A young French naval cadet, of fifteen,
son of a French admiral, was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures
manfully. Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to their posts,
nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft, and they and the captain
fought back the frantic herd of frightened immigrants till the wounded
could be brought there and placed in safety first.

When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for shore,
which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry presently said he
believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!), and therefore
would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded. So they parted,
and Henry returned.

By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and several persons
who were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteously for help.
All efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless; so the buckets were
presently thrown aside and the officers fell-to with axes and tried to
cut the prisoners out. A striker was one of the captives; he said he was
not injured, but could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire
was likely to drive away the workers, he begged that some one would
shoot him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death. The fire did
drive the axmen away, and they had to listen, helpless, to this poor
fellow's supplications till the flames ended his miseries.

The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there;
it was cut adrift, then, and it and the burning steamer floated down
the river toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the head of the
island, and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun, the half-naked
occupants had to remain, without food or stimulants, or help for their
hurts, during the rest of the day. A steamer came along, finally,
and carried the unfortunates to Memphis, and there the most lavish
assistance was at once forthcoming. By this time Henry was insensible.
The physicians examined his injuries and saw that they were fatal, and
naturally turned their main attention to patients who could be saved.

Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a great
public hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies of Memphis
came every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicacies of
all kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded. All the
physicians stood watches there, and all the medical students; and the
rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else was wanted. And
Memphis knew how to do all these things well; for many a disaster
like the 'Pennsylvania's' had happened near her doors, and she was
experienced, above all other cities on the river, in the gracious office
of the 'Good Samaritan.'

The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to
me. Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty, in all--and every
face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome
spectacle. I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy
experience it was. There was one daily incident which was peculiarly
depressing: this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It
was done in order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be
injuriously affected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony.
The fated one was always carried out with as little stir as possible,
and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants;
but no matter: everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, with
its muffled step and its slow movement meant; and all eyes watched it
wistfully, and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.

I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,' and saw them no
more afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than
once. His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was clothed in
linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and resembled nothing human.
He was often out of his mind; and then his pains would make him rave and
shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion, his
disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartment into
a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew; and
he would come to a sitting posture and shout, 'Hump yourselves, HUMP
yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! going to
be all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?' and supplement this
explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanity which
nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty. And now and then
while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off handfuls of the
cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was horrible. It was
bad for the others, of course--this noise and these exhibitions; so the
doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mind or out
of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been killed by that
treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it. He suspected
that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicines and in his
water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips. Once, when he had
been without water during two sweltering days, he took the dipper in his
hand, and the sight of the limpid fluid, and the misery of his thirst,
tempted him almost beyond his strength; but he mastered himself and
threw it away, and after that he allowed no more to be brought near him.
Three times I saw him carried to the death-room, insensible and supposed
to be dying; but each time he revived, cursed his attendants, and
demanded to be taken back. He lived to be mate of a steamboat again.

But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive.
Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in all the attributes that
go to constitute high and flawless character, did all that educated
judgment and trained skill could do for Henry; but, as the newspapers
had said in the beginning, his hurts were past help. On the evening of
the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself with matters far away,
and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.' His hour had struck;
we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.