Life On The Mississippi, Complete

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


Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting
the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there
is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a
glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and
the peril take most of the fun out of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end
turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench, with one of the supports
left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the
reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for
the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current
would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper lantern with a candle
in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile or
more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.
There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is
so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer
a swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the
boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the
oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows;
there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating,
in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the
world of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to
the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will
simply say, 'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who
instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard!
Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way! With a will, men!' The cub
enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers
are watching all the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the
time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering
eyes are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the
gloom and dims away in the remote distance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house with
her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love with her.
So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had been bosom friends
until this time; but now a coolness began to arise. I told the girl a
good many of my river adventures, and made myself out a good deal of a
hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and succeeded
to some extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering. However,
virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead
in the contest. About this time something happened which promised
handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head
of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when
the passengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch,
therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect love
of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound;
her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates
was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a
steamer where no end of 'style' was put on.

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night,
and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman's uneducated eyes
could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers
were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory. As I hurried
through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I met
Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself of a mean speech--

'Ain't you glad YOU don't have to go out sounding?'

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said--

'Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole yourself. I was
going after it, but I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it.'

'Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the sounding-boat.'

'It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's been up on the
ladies' cabin guards two days, drying.'

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching and
wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:

'Give way, men!'

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming away, the
unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him
with the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to
fetch. Then that young girl said to me--

'Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night! Do
you think there is any danger?'

I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom, to help in
the pilot-house. By and by the boat's lantern disappeared, and after an
interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile away.
Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment, backed the steamer
out, and made for it. We flew along for a while, then slackened steam
and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg
exclaimed--

'Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!'

He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said--

'Why, there it is again!'

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads.
Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again! Mr.
Thornburg muttered--

'Well, I don't understand this. I believe that buoy has drifted off the
reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left. No matter, it is safest
to run over it anyhow.'

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light.
Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg
seized the bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed--

'My soul, it's the sounding-boat!'

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below--a pause--and then
the sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed--

'There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boat to lucifer
matches! Run! See who is killed!'

I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the
third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their
danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great
guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew
what to do; at my chiefs order they sprang at the right instant, seized
the guard, and were hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding-yawl
swept aft to the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of
the men and the cub Tom, were missing--a fact which spread like wildfire
over the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway,
ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of
the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them say, 'Poor fellows!
poor boy, poor boy!'

By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away, to search for the
missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The yawl had
disappeared in the other direction. Half the people rushed to one side
to encourage the swimmer with their shouts; the other half rushed the
other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about. By the callings,
the swimmer was approaching, but some said the sound showed failing
strength. The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings,
leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry
wrung from them such words as, 'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there
no way to save him?'

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice
said pluckily--

'I can make it! Stand by with a rope!'

What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his stand in the
glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand, and his men grouped
about him. The next moment the swimmer's face appeared in the circle of
light, and in another one the owner of it was hauled aboard, limp and
drenched, while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom.

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men.
They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struck
by the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at all, but
had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel. It was
nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody
went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he
had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of that
pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed her,
any way.

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the
buoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell
away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a
position a hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the
steamer's course, headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having
to wait some time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when
he judged that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was
gone, but supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went
on with his talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on
him, but that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him
closely, for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to
sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was
trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he
sang out, 'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant
the jump was made.




Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make
plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the
peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there
is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has
brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is
so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'
sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if
he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the
vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing
it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river and
know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street
in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently
until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and
little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly
name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in
that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a
tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge
who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will
go on until you know every street crossing, the character, size, and
position of the crossing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of
those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must
know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if you
will take half of the signs in that long street, and CHANGE THEIR PLACES
once a month, and still manage to know their new positions accurately on
dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes without making any
mistakes, you will understand what is required of a pilot's peerless
memory by the fickle Mississippi.

I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world.
To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them
glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book
and recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant
mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's
massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the
handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am
not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too
strong, but pilots will not.

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how
placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast
stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single
valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry,
'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until
it become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be
going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking,
and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst
of this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be
interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again,
just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with
precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain
was uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and
side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat
there and put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter
twain' did not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained
faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of
depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without
requiring any assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking
and talking with a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a
monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and
then in the midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A,
etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or
three weeks afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell
what objects you were passing at the moment it was done. But you could
if your memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that
sort of thing mechanically.

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting will
develop it into a very colossus of capability. But ONLY IN THE MATTERS
IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN. A time would come when the man's faculties could
not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not help
holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same
man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten chances to
one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the
human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of
business.

At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,
Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles of that
stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he had seen
each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was
so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few
trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and
night--and he ranked A 1, too.

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats
of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was born in
him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name.
Instantly Mr. Brown would break in--

'Oh, I knew HIM. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a little scar on
the side of his throat, like a splinter under the flesh. He was only
in the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. I made a
trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then; the "Henry
Blake" grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the
"George Elliott" unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the "Sunflower"--'

'Why, the "Sunflower" didn't sink until--'

'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of
December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first
clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these
things a week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the
"Sunflower." Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of
the next year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died
two years after 3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the
Hardys,--they were Alleghany River men,--but people who knew them told
me all these things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter
and summer just the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she
was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It
was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton
before she was married.'

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could NOT forget
any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial details remained
as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain there for
years, as the most memorable events. His was not simply a pilot's
memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking about a trifling
letter he had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver
you the entire screed from memory. And then without observing that he
was departing from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely
to hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that
letter; and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's
relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too.

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences
are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting
circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog
his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an insufferable
bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little
grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown
would start out with the honest intention of telling you a vastly funny
anecdote about a dog. He would be 'so full of laugh' that he could
hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog's breed and
personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner; of his owner's
family, with descriptions of weddings and burials that had occurred in
it, together with recitals of congratulatory verses and obituary poetry
provoked by the same: then this memory would recollect that one of these
events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter' of such and such a
year, and a minute description of that winter would follow, along with
the names of people who were frozen to death, and statistics showing the
high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork and hay would suggest
corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses; cows and
horses would suggest the circus and certain celebrated bare-back riders;
the transition from the circus to the menagerie was easy and natural;
from the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course
the heathen savages would suggest religion; and at the end of three or
four hours' tedious jaw, the watch would change, and Brown would go out
of the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons he had heard years
before about the efficacy of prayer as a means of grace. And the
original first mention would be all you had learned about that dog,
after all this waiting and hungering.

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities which he
must also have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a
cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give a man the merest trifle
of pluck to start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he cannot
be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but one cannot quite
say the same for judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man
must START with a good stock of that article or he will never succeed as
a pilot.

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time 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 DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the
bend above island 66, brimful 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 one 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-ropes 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--