Life On The Mississippi, Complete

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


'Did they actually impede navigation?'

'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that
we didn't get aground on alligators.'

It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.
However, I restrained myself and said--

'It must have been dreadful.'

'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It was so
hard to tell anything about the water; the damned things shift around
so--never lie still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef,
straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a break; you can tell a
sand-reef--that's all easy; but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth
anything. Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; and when
you do see where it is, like as not it ain't there when YOU get there,
the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there were some
few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they
could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it
wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let
me see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and
Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon,
and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood--all A 1 alligator
pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian
could tell whiskey. Read it?--Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I
had as many dollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half
off. Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could
always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had to
lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for alligators;
they never laid up for anything but fog. They could SMELL the best
alligator water it was said; I don't know whether it was so or not, and
I think a body's got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he
knows himself, without going around backing up other people's say-so's,
though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it, as long as
they can roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style
of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom--maybe quarter-LESS.'

[My! Was this Rob Styles?--This mustached and stately figure?-A
slim enough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in
five-and-twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After
these musings, I said aloud--

'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much
good, because they could come back again right away.'

'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn't
talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED. It's
the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie. If there's
one thing that an alligator is more down on than another, it's being
dredged. Besides, they were not simply shoved out of the way; the most
of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the
hold; and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the
Government works.'

'What for?'

'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the Government shoes
are made of alligator hide. It makes the best shoes in the world. They
last five years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is
a Government monopoly. All the alligators are Government property--just
like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you
fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision
of treason--lucky duck if they don't hang you, too. And they will, if
you're a Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you
can't touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and
you've got to let him alone.'

'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'

'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'

'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'

'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and down now
and then. The present generation of alligators know them as easy as a
burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they break camp and
go for the woods.'

After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator
business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein,
and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats
of his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain
extraordinary performance of his chief favorite among this distinguished
fleet--and then adding--

'That boat was the "Cyclone,"--last trip she ever made--she sunk, that
very trip--captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I
struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of weather.
Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most scandalous
liar! I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb says, "like
master, like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man, you'll come
under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He paid first-class
wages; but said I, What's wages when your reputation's in danger? So I
let the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've never regretted
it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the way I look at
it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the world--all
packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged.
They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt up
in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice.
If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high, but
he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of drawing. He was intended
to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made first, but he
didn't get there; he was only five feet ten. That's what he was, and
that's what he is. You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the
size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.
That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and the sweetest thing to steer that
ever walked the waters. Set her amidships, in a big river, and just let
her go; it was all you had to do. She would hold herself on a star
all night, if you let her alone. You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It
wasn't any more labor to steer her than it is to count the Republican
vote in a South Carolina election. One morning, just at daybreak, the
last trip she ever made, they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I
didn't know anything about it; I backed her out from the wood-yard
and went a-weaving down the river all serene. When I had gone about
twenty-three miles, and made four horribly crooked crossings--'

'Without any rudder?'

'Yes--old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me
for running such a dark night--'

'Such a DARK NIGHT ?--Why, you said--'

'Never mind what I said,--'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon
the moon began to rise, and--'

'You mean the SUN--because you started out just at break of--look here!
Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or--'

'It was before--oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he--'

'But was this the trip she sunk, or was--'

'Oh, no!--months afterward. And so the old man, he--'

'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said--'

He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and
said--

'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while--you're
handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a stranger and an
innocent!--why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words; and I made
up my mind to find out what was your little game. It was to DRAW ME OUT.
Well, I let you, didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and
next time play fair, and you won't have to work your passage.'

Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out from St.
Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I had been itching
to get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to have
forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to steer a steamboat,
nor how to enjoy it, either.




Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman

THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is varied and
beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,
and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing
between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to
breeze and sunshine, and our boat threw the miles out behind her with
satisfactory despatch.

We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a
penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At Grand Tower, too,
there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets
its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the
water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful
handiwork--and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of
that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil's
Bake Oven--so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble
anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great
smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched
some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for
anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's
Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his
which I cannot now call to mind.

The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in
old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new
coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old
coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had
been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its
best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-wash
on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality, than
anywhere in the West; and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get any
milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation; and it
is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In my own
experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that people
who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was plausibility in
Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make lime run more to
religion than whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower
was a great coaling center and a prospering place.

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome
appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the
town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for
thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri! There was another
college higher up on an airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely
and peculiarly towered and pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with
the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the
Athens of Missouri, and contained several colleges besides those already
mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another.
He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive
religious look of the town,' but I could not see that it looked more
religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the
same kind of bricks. Partialities often make people see more than really
exists.

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river. He is a man of
practical sense and a level head; has observed; has had much experience
of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a perceptible
dash of poetry in his composition, an easy gift of speech, a thick
growl in his voice, and an oath or two where he can get at them when the
exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the
blessed old-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when there is
work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with
sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more. 'GIT
up there you! Going to be all day? Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified
in your hind legs, before you shipped!'

He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so they
like him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchy garb of the
old generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in
uniform--a natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons, along with all
the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style
of scenery from what he is now.

Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes put
together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise--that it was
not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible, that it might
have been thought of earlier, one would suppose. During fifty years, out
there, the innocent passenger in need of help and information, has been
mistaking the mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber--and
being roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now.
And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is another advantage
achieved by the dress-reform period.

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it
'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always;
about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to
take a boat through, in low water.

Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the foot of it,
were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergone conspicuous
alteration. Nor the Chain, either--in the nature of things; for it is a
chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats
on bad nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of
sight; among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked her
bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me--Uncle
Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me,
this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to
Mumford, who added--

'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a matter,
and call it superstition. But you will always notice that they are
people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I went
down the river once in such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we
grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just below this same Commerce;
we jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the
'Graveyard' behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight;
we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo
with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more, may have been
less. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads
with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and threw the
preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at all. The preacher
was fished out and saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had been to
blame. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'

That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,
seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is
fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous
friends against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but
persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the
same day--it may have been the next, and some say it was, though I think
it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was
borne to his home a corpse. This is literally true.

No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away.
I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in,
except that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad
region--all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who
lived on the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had
left their bones strung along within sight from his house. Between
St. Louis and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two
hundred wrecks, altogether.

I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock was
out in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;'
it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it.
A big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the
Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more. The island called
Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early
destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a
steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,' among whose numberless wrecks
we used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the
channel now, and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called
the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie close
to the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is
joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see where the
seam is--but it is Illinois ground yet, and the people who live on
it have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay
Illinois taxes: singular state of things!

Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.
Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point upon
whose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way around
to get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and
meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for
the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream
a long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone
into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made
down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The
Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's
farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's
neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings.

Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid no
attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows. By doing some
strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss, for he would have
made good literature.

Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a city
look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate, as
per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was already building with
bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel (now General)
Grant was drilling his first command there. Uncle Mumford says the
libraries and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well as
the brick masons. Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her
situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous
that she cannot well help prospering.

When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky,
and were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.
Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great and
lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in her warehouses
from a large area of country and shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford
says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and
he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade
out of her hands by 'collaring it along the line without gathering it at
her doors.'




Chapter 26 Under Fire

TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the
upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just
behind us, so there was a good deal said about the famous battle of
Belmont. Several of the boat's officers had seen active service in the
Mississippi war-fleet. I gathered that they found themselves sadly out
of their element in that kind of business at first, but afterward got
accustomed to it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it. One
of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a
pilot on a boat in the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity
to know how a green hand might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all
solitary and alone on high in a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick
and Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame him from showing the white
feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his
story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left
till that time empty.


THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLE


He said--

It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning. I
was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus.
Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he
was going to see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't
anxious, I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a
coward, and left.

That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men strip their
coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to hell
or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house; and then he
galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow, with his
white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading his troops
as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and
here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil take the
hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter. I
was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All at
once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was a bullet.
I didn't stop to think about anything, I just tilted over backwards and
landed on the floor, and staid there. The balls came booming around.
Three cannon-balls went through the chimney; one ball took off the
corner of the pilot-house; shells were screaming and bursting all
around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come. I lay there on the
pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster. I crept in
behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house. Presently a
minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head, and cut my
hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captain was on the
roof with a red-headed major from Memphis--a fine-looking man. I heard
him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that pilot is killed.' I crept
over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her back; raised up
and took a look, and I saw about fifteen shot holes through the window
panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them. I glanced out on the
water, and the spattering shot were like a hailstorm. I thought best to
get out of that place. I went down the pilot-house guy, head first--not
feet first but head first--slid down--before I struck the deck, the
captain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the guy and got on the
floor again. About that time, they collared my partner and were bringing
him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers. Somebody had said I
was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the floor reaching for the
backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he ain't shot,' and jerked away from
the men who had him by the collar, and ran below. We were there until
three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got away all right.

The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest, and
tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?'
He says, 'I went down in the hold.'

All through that fight I was scared nearly to death. I hardly knew
anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that but me.
Next day General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and
gallant conduct. I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged it
wasn't so, but it was not for me to contradict a general officer.

Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go off to
the Hot Springs. When there, I got a good many letters from commanders
saying they wanted me to come back. I declined, because I wasn't well
enough or strong enough; but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had
made.

A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me that that
pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;' that his subsequent
career in the war was proof of it.

We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went below
and fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy
carriage and an intelligent face. We were approaching Island No. 10,
a place so celebrated during the war. This gentleman's home was on the
main shore in its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about the war
times; but presently the discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of
the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer
between warring families, than in this particular region. This gentleman
said--

'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but I reckon
the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't
know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the
Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living,
which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a
cow--anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no
consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could
have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words
had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and
crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other;
and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud
and kept it a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each
other, year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see
--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever a
Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was
going to get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on
the other. They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the
family. They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,
they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A man
shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods, and didn't
give him no chance. If he HAD 'a' given him a chance, the boy'd 'a' shot
him. Both families belonged to the same church (everybody around here is
religious); through all this fifty or sixty years' fuss, both tribes was
there every Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of the line, and
the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church and half
the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you'd
see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and
children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly, one
lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the Kentucky
side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against the wall,
handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and praise;
though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down, along with the
rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know; never was at that
church in my life; but I remember that that's what used to be said.