THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptlyput such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoalwater and the countless crossing-marks began to stay with me.
But the result was just the same. I never could more than getone knotty thing learned before another presented itself.
Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to readit as if it were a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.
A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby seemed to think me farenough advanced to bear a lesson on water-reading. So he began--'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water Now,that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-barunder it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.
There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.
If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out.
Do you see where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins tofade away '
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef.
You can climb over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over,now, and follow along close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.'
I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end.
Then Mr. Bixby said--'Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won't want to mount the reef;a boat hates shoal water. Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in hand.
NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!'
He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spinit around until it was hard down, and then we held it so.
The boat resisted, and refused to answer for a while, and next shecame surging to starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long,angry ridge of water foaming away from her bows.
'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you.
When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little,in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle;it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal;but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point.
You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point,because the water that comes down around it forms an eddyand allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lineson the face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan.
Well, those are little reefs; you want to just miss the endsof them, but run them pretty close. Now look out--look out!
Don't you crowd that slick, greasy-looking place; there ain'tnine feet there; she won't stand it. She begins to smell it;look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you go!
Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back!
Set her back!
The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly,shooting white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes,but it was too late. The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest;the foamy ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared,a great dead swell came rolling forward and swept ahead of her,she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing awaytoward the other shore as if she were about scared to death.
We were a good mile from where we ought to have been, when wefinally got the upper hand of her again.
During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if Iknew how to run the next few miles. I said--'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one,start out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, makea square crossing and----'
'That's all right. I'll be back before you close up on the next point.'
But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upona piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not knowthat he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform.
I went gaily along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had neverleft the boat in my sole charge such a length of time before.
I even got to 'setting' her and letting the wheel go, entirely, while Ivaingloriously turned my back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune,a sort of easy indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixbyand other great pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I facedto the front again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn'tclapped my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightfulbluff reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows!
My head was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on;I gasped and could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with suchrapidity that it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boatanswered and turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her!
I fled, and still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows!
I never looked to see where I was going, I only fled.
The awful crash was imminent--why didn't that villain come!
If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I might get thrown overboard.
But better that than kill the boat. So in blind desperation I startedsuch a rattling 'shivaree' down below as never had astounded an engineerin this world before, I fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the enginesbegan to back and fill in a furious way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the woods on the other side of the river.
Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view on the hurricane deck.
My soul went out to him in gratitude. My distress vanished; I would havefelt safe on the brink of Niagara, with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck.
He blandly and sweetly took his tooth-pick out of his mouth betweenhis fingers, as if it were a cigar--we were just in the act of climbingan overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these commands to me ever so gently--'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.'
The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughsa critical instant, then reluctantly began to back away.
'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard.
Come ahead on it. Point her for the bar.'
I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr. Bixby came in and said,with mock simplicity--'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three timesbefore you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'
I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.
'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watchwill tell you when he wants to wood up.'
I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.
'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then?
Did you ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at thisstage of the river?'
'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting awayfrom a bluff reef.'
'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three milesof where you were.'
'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.'
'Just about. Run over it!'
'Do you give it as an order?'
'Yes. Run over it.'
'If I don't, I wish I may die.'
'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just asanxious to kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before.
I impressed my orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest,and made a straight break for the reef. As it disappeared underour bows I held my breath; but we slid over it like oil.
'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a WIND reef.
The wind does that.'
'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef.
How am I ever going to tell them apart?'
'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just naturallyKNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or how youknow them apart'
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time,became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to theuneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve,delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it utteredthem with a voice. And it was not a book to be read onceand thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a pagethat was void of interest, never one that you could leaveunread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.
There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never onewhose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkinglyrenewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read itwas charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface(on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether);but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED passage; indeed, it wasmore than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals,with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it;for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that couldtear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated.
It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes,and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passengerwho could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of prettypictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds,whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all,but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to knowevery trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as Iknew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.
But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could neverbe restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetryhad gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certainwonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me.
A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distancethe red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling uponthe water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings,that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest,was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines,ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded,and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one placeby a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forestwall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowedlike a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun.
There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances;and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights driftedsteadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture.
The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the gloriesand the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought uponthe river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them.
Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked uponit without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, afterthis fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow;that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it;that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is goingto kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretchingout like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changingchannel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonderare a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously;that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag,and he has located himself in the very best place he could have foundto fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch,is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get throughthis blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river.
All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amountof usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe pilotingof a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart.
What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctorbut a 'break' that ripples above some deadly disease.
Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to himthe signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see herbeauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally,and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself?
And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lostmost by learning his trade?
WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have precededthis may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting as a science.
It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not quite done yet.
I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way, what a wonderfulscience it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted, and therefore it isa comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run them; clear-water rivers,with gravel bottoms, change their channels very gradually, and thereforeone needs to learn them but once; but piloting becomes another matterwhen you apply it to vast streams like the Mississippi and the Missouri,whose alluvial banks cave and change constantly, whose snags are alwayshunting up new quarters, whose sand-bars are never at rest, whose channelsare for ever dodging and shirking, and whose obstructions must beconfronted in all nights and all weathers without the aid of a singlelight-house or a single buoy; for there is neither light nor buoy to befound anywhere in all this three or four thousand miles of villainousriver. Ifeel justified in enlarging upon this great science for the reason that Ifeel sure no one has ever yet written a paragraph about it who had piloteda steamboat himself, and so had a practical knowledge of the subject.
If the theme were hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently withthe reader; but since it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take upa considerable degree of room with it.
When I had learned the name and position of every visiblefeature of the river; when I had so mastered its shape that Icould shut my eyes and trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans;when I had learned to read the face of the water as one wouldcull the news from the morning paper; and finally, when Ihad trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless arrayof soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them,I judged that my education was complete: so I got to tiltingmy cap to the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in mymouth at the wheel. Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs.
One day he said--'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?'
'How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile away.'
'Very poor eye--very poor. Take the glass.'
I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell.
I suppose that that bank is about a foot and a half high.'
'Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How high was the bankalong here last trip?'
'I don't know; I never noticed.'
'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.'
'Why?'
'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you.
For one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whetherthere's more water or less in the river along here than therewas last trip.'
'The leads tell me that.' I rather thought I had the advantageof him there.
'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so,and then you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-footbank here last trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now.
What does that signify?'
'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.'
'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?'
'Rising.'
'No it ain't.'
'I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floatingdown the stream.'
'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while afterthe river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you about this. Wait tillyou come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do you see thisnarrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the water was higher.
You see the driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank helps in other ways.
Do you see that stump on the false point?'
'Ay, ay, sir.'
'Well, the water is just up to the roots of it.
You must make a note of that.'
'Why?'
'Because that means that there's seven feet in the chute of 103.'
'But 103 is a long way up the river yet.'
'That's where the benefit of the bank comes in. There is waterenough in 103 NOW, yet there may not be by the time we get there;but the bank will keep us posted all along. You don't run closechutes on a falling river, up-stream, and there are precious fewof them that you are allowed to run at all down-stream. There'sa law of the United States against it. The river may be risingby the time we get to 103, and in that case we'll run it.
We are drawing--how much?'
'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.'
'Well, you do seem to know something.'
'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up aneverlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles,month in and month out?'
'Of course!'
My emotions were too deep for words for a while.
Presently I said--'
And how about these chutes. Are there many of them?'
'I should say so. I fancy we shan't run any of the river this tripas you've ever seen it run before--so to speak. If the river beginsto rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seenstanding out of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house;we'll cut across low places that you've never noticed at all,right through the middle of bars that cover three hundred acres of river;we'll creep through cracks where you've always thought was solid land;we'll dart through the woods and leave twenty-five miles of riveroff to one side; we'll see the hind-side of every island between NewOrleans and Cairo.'
'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more riveras I already know.'
'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.'
'Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool when I wentinto this business.'
'Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll not bewhen you've learned it.'
'Ah, I never can learn it.'
'I will see that you DO.'
By and by I ventured again--'Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of the river--shapes and all--and so I can run it at night?'
'Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks from one endof the river to the other, that will help the bank tell youwhen there is water enough in each of these countless places--like that stump, you know. When the river first beginsto rise, you can run half a dozen of the deepest of them;when it rises a foot more you can run another dozen;the next foot will add a couple of dozen, and so on:
so you see you have to know your banks and marks to a deadmoral certainty, and never get them mixed; for when you startthrough one of those cracks, there's no backing out again,as there is in the big river; you've got to go through,or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling river.
There are about fifty of these cracks which you can't run at allexcept when the river is brim full and over the banks.'
'This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.'
'Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told you; when youstart into one of those places you've got to go through.
They are too narrow to turn around in, too crooked to back out of,and the shoal water is always up at the head; never elsewhere.
And the head of them is always likely to be filling up, little by little,so that the marks you reckon their depth by, this season, may notanswer for next.'
'Learn a new set, then, every year?'
'Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are you standing upthrough the middle of the river for?'
The next few months showed me strange things. On the same day that we heldthe conversation above narrated, we met a great rise coming down the river.
The whole vast face of the stream was black with drifting dead logs,broken boughs, and great trees that had caved in and been washed away.
It required the nicest steering to pick one's way through thisrushing raft, even in the day-time, when crossing from point to point;and at night the difficulty was mightily increased; every now and thena huge log, lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear rightunder our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then;we could only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that logfrom one end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and careeningthe boat in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers.
Now and then we would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang,dead in the center, with a full head of steam, and it would stun the boatas if she had hit a continent. Sometimes this log would lodge, and stayright across our nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we wouldhave to do a little craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction.
We often hit WHITE logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till wewere right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night.
A white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is gone.
Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigioustimber-rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi,coal barges from Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere,and broad-horns from 'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruitand furniture'--the usual term for describing it, though in plainEnglish the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins.
Pilots bore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returnedwith usury. The law required all such helpless traders to keepa light burning, but it was a law that was often broken.
All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up,right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice,with the backwoods 'whang' to it, would wail out--'Whar'n the ---- you goin' to! Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashedaig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!'
Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaceswould reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating oratoras if under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen anddeck-hands would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity,one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing fragmentsof a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness would shut again.
And that flatboatman would be sure to go into New Orleans and sueour boat, swearing stoutly that he had a light burning all the time,when in truth his gang had the lantern down below to sing and lieand drink and gamble by, and no watch on deck. Once, at night, in oneof those forest-bordered crevices (behind an island) which steamboatmenintensely describe with the phrase 'as dark as the inside of a cow,'
we should have eaten up a Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all,but that they happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caughtthe sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no serious damage,unfortunately, but coming so near it that we had good hopes for a moment.
These people brought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we backedand filled to get away, the precious family stood in the light of it--both sexes and various ages--and cursed us till everything turned blue.
Once a coalboatman sent a bullet through our pilot-house, when we borrowed asteering oar of him in a very narrow place.
DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance.
We were running chute after chute,--a new world to me,--and if there wasa particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meeta broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in astill worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water.
And then there would be no end of profane cordialities exchanged.
Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our waycautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenlybe broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in instanta log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil,close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives,but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piledon all the steam we had, to scramble out of the way!
One doesn't hit a rock or a solid log craft with a steamboatwhen he can get excused.
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks alwayscarried a large assortment of religious tracts with themin those old departed steamboating days. Indeed they did.
Twenty times a day we would be cramping up around a bar,while a string of these small-fry rascals were drifting down intothe head of the bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles.
Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and come fightingits laborious way across the desert of water. It would 'ease all,'
in the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout,'Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff drifted swiftly astern.
The clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals.
If these were picked up without comment, you might notice that now a dozenother skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything.
You understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going to fare.
No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to their oarsand come on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk wouldheave over neat bundles of religious tracts, tied to shingles.
The amount of hard swearing which twelve packages of religious literaturewill command when impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews,who have pulled a heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them,is simply incredible.
As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision.
By the time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths andwere hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before;we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which Ihad always seen avoided before; we were clattering through chutes like thatof 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till ournose was almost at the very spot. Some of these chutes were utter solitudes.
The dense, untouched forest overhung both banks of the crooked little crack,and one could believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.
The swinging grape-vines, the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by,the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks,and all the spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrownaway there. The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep,except at the head; the current was gentle; under the 'points' the waterwas absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the tenderwillow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in them as youtore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretchederlittle log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a footor two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked,yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbowson knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and dischargingthe result at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth;while the rest of the family and the few farm-animals were huddledtogether in an empty wood-flat riding at her moorings close at hand.
In this flat-boat the family would have to cook and eatand sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or possiblyweeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and letthem get back to their log-cabin and their chills again--chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Providenceto enable them to take exercise without exertion.
And this sort of watery camping out was a thing which these peoplewere rather liable to be treated to a couple of times a year:
by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise outof the Mississippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations,for they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the deadnow and then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by.
They appreciated the blessing, too, for they spread their mouthsand eyes wide open and made the most of these occasions.
Now what could these banished creatures find to do to keep from dyingof the blues during the low-water season!'
Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we foundour course completely bridged by a great fallen tree.
This will serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were.
The passengers had an hour's recreation in a virgin wilderness,while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away; for there was no suchthing as turning back, you comprehend.
From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks, you haveno particular trouble in the night, for the thousand-mile wall of denseforest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farmor wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't 'get out of the river'
much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from BatonRouge to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more thana mile wide, and very deep--as much as two hundred feet, in places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of their timberand bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and therea scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-trees. The timber isshorn off clear to the rear of the plantations, from two to four miles.
When the first frost threatens to come, the planters snatch offtheir crops in a hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane,they form the refuse of the stalks (which they call BAGASSE)into great piles and set fire to them, though in other sugar countriesthe bagasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills.
Now the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's own kitchen.
An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the Mississippiall the way down that lower end of the river, and this embankment is setback from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a hundred feet,according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a general thing.
Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundredmiles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks, and turna steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will feel.
And see how you will feel, too! You find yourself away out in the midstof a vague dim sea that is shoreless, that fades out and loses itselfin the murky distances; for you cannot discern the thin rib of embankment,and you are always imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. Theplantations themselves are transformed by the smoke, and look like a partof the sea. All through your watch you are tortured with the exquisite miseryof uncertainty. You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do not know.
All that you are sure about is that you are likely to be within six feet ofthe bank and destruction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore.
And you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenly to fetch up againstthe embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the smallcomfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do.
One of the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantationone night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week. But there was nonovelty about it; it had often been done before.
I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wishto add a curious thing, while it is in my mind.
It is only relevant in that it is connected with piloting.
There used to be an excellent pilot on the river, a Mr. X.,who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind wastroubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sureto get up and walk in his sleep and do strange things.
He was once fellow-pilot for a trip or two with George Ealer,on a great New Orleans passenger packet. During a considerablepart of the first trip George was uneasy, but got over itby and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when asleep.
Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas; the waterwas low, and the crossing above the town in a very blind andtangled condition. X. had seen the crossing since Ealer had,and as the night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark,Ealer was considering whether he had not better have X. called toassist in running the place, when the door opened and X. walked in.
Now on very dark nights, light is a deadly enemy to piloting;you are aware that if you stand in a lighted room, on sucha night, you cannot see things in the street to any purpose;but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can makeout objects in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights,pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-housestove if there is a crack which can allow the least rayto escape; they order the furnaces to be curtained with hugetarpaulins and the sky-lights to be closely blinded.
Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The undefinableshape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X.'s voice.
This said--Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you have,and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easierthan I could tell you how to do it.'
'It is kind of you, and I swear I am willing.
I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me.
I have been spinning around and around the wheel like a squirrel.
It is so dark I can't tell which way she is swinging till she iscoming around like a whirligig.'
So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless.
The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stoodat ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that,as gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday.
When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he hadnot confessed! He stared, and wondered, and finally said--'
Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that wasanother mistake of mine.'
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang for the leads;he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and neatlyinto invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and peeredblandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his position;as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines entirely,and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting' followed when the shoalestwater was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her handsomely over,and then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal marks;the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed, the boatslipped through without touching bottom, and entered upon the third andlast intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom,crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest waterwas cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging overthe reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and said--'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done onthe Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done,if I hadn't seen it.'
There was no reply, and he added--'Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and geta cup of coffee.'
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,'
and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchmanhappened in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticedEaler and exclaimed--'Who is at the wheel, sir?'
'X.'
'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!'
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer waswhistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will!
The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel,set an engine back with power, and held his breath while the boatreluctantly swung away from a 'towhead' which she was about to knockinto the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!
By and by the watchman came back and said--'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up here?'
'NO.'
'Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railingsjust as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement;and I put him to bed; now just this minute there he was again,away astern, going through that sort of tight-rope deviltrythe same as before.'
'Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those fits.
But I hope he'll have them often. You just ought to have seen him takethis boat through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so gaudy before.
And if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin pilotingwhen he is sound asleep, what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!'
WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is 'drawing all the water'
there is in the channel,--or a few inches more, as was often the casein the old times,--one must be painfully circumspect in his piloting.
We used to have to 'sound' a number of particularly bad places almost everytrip when the river was at a very low stage.
Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just abovethe shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his 'cub' or steersmanand a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes outin the yawl--provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury,a regularly-devised 'sounding-boat'--and proceeds to hunt for the best water,the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass, meantime,and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat's whistle,signifying 'try higher up' or 'try lower down;' for the surface ofthe water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligiblewhen inspected from a little distance than very close at hand.
The whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except whenthe wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's surface.
When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened,the pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long,and the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to 'hold her upto starboard;' or, 'let her fall off to larboard;'
term 'larboard' is never used at seam now, to signify the left hand;but was always used on the river in my time]> or 'steady--steadyas you go.'
When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approachingthe shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to 'ease all!'
Then the men stop rowing and the yawl drifts with the current.
The next order is, 'Stand by with the buoy!' The momentthe shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order,'Let go the buoy!' and over she goes. If the pilot isnot satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better waterhigher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place.
Being finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the menstand their oars straight up in the air, in line; a blast fromthe boat's whistle indicates that the signal has been seen;then the men 'give way' on their oars and lay the yawlalongside the buoy; the steamer comes creeping carefully down,is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her power forthe coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment,turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing overthe buoy and the sand, and gains the deep water beyond.
Or maybe she doesn't; maybe she 'strikes and swings.'
Then she has to while away several hours (or days)sparring herself off.
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 arope 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 paperlantern 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 inthe 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 steera swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boatwhen 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 ismusic in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer,to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the worldof 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 soundingfor the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching allthe yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight;and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastenedupon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims awayin the remote distance.
One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-housewith her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in lovewith her. So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had beenbosom friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise.
I told the girl a good many of my river adventures, and mademyself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appearto be a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he alwayshad 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 thepassengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch,therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfectlove of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet asa 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 uneducatedeyes 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 upin storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not forbear deliveringmyself 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 watchingand 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 himwith 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 watera 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 driftedoff 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 seizedthe 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-boatto lucifer matches! Run! See who is killed!'
I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the thirdmate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their dangerwhen it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great guardsovershadowed 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 aftto the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of the men andthe 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 searchfor the missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left.
The yawl had disappeared in the other direction. Half the peoplerushed 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 soundshowed failing strength. The crowd massed themselves againstthe 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 presentlythe voice said pluckily--'I can make it! Stand by with a rope!'
What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his standin 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 faceappeared in the circle of light, and in another one the owner of itwas 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 struckby 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 haveenough 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 thebuoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoyhe fell away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he tookup a position a hundred yards below it and a little to one side ofthe 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 alreadyrun over it; he went on with his talk; he noticed that the steamerwas getting very close on him, but that was the correct thing;it was her business to shave him closely, for convenience in takinghim 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 thejump was made.
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 incessantlycultivate 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 realizewhat a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelvehundred miles of river and know it with absolute exactness.
If you will take the longest street in New York, and travel upand down it, conning its features patiently until you know everyhouse and window and door and lamp-post and big and little signby heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantlyname the one you are abreast of when you are set down at randomin that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will thenhave a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of apilot'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 orderto keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if youwill take half of the signs in that long street, and CHANGE THEIRPLACES once a month, and still manage to know their new positionsaccurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changeswithout making any mistakes, you will understand what is requiredof a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.
I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thingin 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 waysand never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant massof knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot'smassed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facilityin 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 upits vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses ormislays 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 doinghis share of the talking, and no longer consciously listeningto the leadsman; and in the midst of this endless string of halftwains 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 precisionthe boat's position in the river when that quarter twainwas 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 takethe 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 futurereference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter.
If you were walking and talking with a friend, and another friendat 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 youwere passing at the moment it was done. But you could if yourmemory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sortof thing mechanically.
Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and pilotingwill 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 helpnoticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could nothelp holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if youasked 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 willdevote 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 milesof 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 dayand night--and he ranked A 1, too.
Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose featsof memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was bornin 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 alittle scar on the side of his throat, like a splinter underthe 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 wreckof 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 thingsa 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 after3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the Hardys,--they wereAlleghany 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 sevenyears before, he was pretty sure to deliver you the entire screedfrom memory. And then without observing that he was departingfrom the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to hurlin 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 occurrencesare of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interestingcircumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is boundto clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himselfan 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 honestintention of telling you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog.
He would be 'so full of laugh' that he could hardly begin; then hismemory 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 poetryprovoked by the same: then this memory would recollect that oneof these events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter'
of such and such a year, and a minute description of that winterwould 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 wouldsuggest cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circusand certain celebrated bare-back riders; the transition fromthe circus to the menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephantto equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course the heathensavages would suggest religion; and at the end of three or four hours'
tedious jaw, the watch would change, and Brown would go outof the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons he had heardyears 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 qualitieswhich he must also have. He must have good and quick judgmentand 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 timehe has become a pilot he cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboatcan get into; but one cannot quite say the same for judgment.
Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man must START with a goodstock 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 untilsome time after the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,'
alone and under the staggering weight of all the responsibilitiesconnected with the position. When an apprentice has become prettythoroughly acquainted with the river, he goes clattering alongso fearlessly with his steamboat, night or day, that he presentlybegins to imagine that it is HIS courage that animates him;but the first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to hisown devices he finds out it was the other man's. He discoversthat 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 minuteshe is as white as a sheet and scared almost to death.
Therefore pilots wisely train these cubs by various strategictricks to look danger in the face a little more calmly.
A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle uponthe candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterwardI used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it.
I had become a good steersman; so good, indeed, that I had allthe work to do on our watch, night and day; Mr. Bixby seldommade a suggestion to me; all he ever did was to take the wheelon particularly bad nights or in particularly bad crossings,land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentlemanof leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages.
The lower river was about bank-full, and if anybody had questionedmy ability to run any crossing between Cairo and New Orleanswithout 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 bendabove island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my noseas 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 crossingin the whole river. One couldn't come to any harm, whether he ran itright 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 therewith 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 sayinganything more. I began to imagine all sorts of things.
Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent somebody down tothe 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 wherehe could observe results. Presently the captain stepped out onthe 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 fifteenor 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 uneasinessin his voice--'Where is Mr. Bixby?'
'Gone below, sir.'
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to constructdangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keepthe 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 dislocatingevery 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 newdangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to findperils 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 onmy 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 thespeaking-tube and shouted to the engineer--'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortalSOUL out of her! '
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stoodMr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience onthe hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter.
I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man inhuman history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks,came ahead on the engines, and said--'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN'T it?
I suppose I'll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heavethe lead at the head of 66.'
'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you won't;for I want you to learn something by that experience.
Didn't you KNOW there was no bottom in that crossing?'
'Yes, sir, I did.'
'Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody elseto shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that.
And another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward.
That isn't going to help matters any.'
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned.
Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often hadto hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.
It was, 'Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!'
IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiaeof the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by stepto a comprehension of what the science consists of; and atthe same time I have tried to show him that it is a very curiousand wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his attention.
If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing,for I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain:
a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered andentirely independent human being that lived in the earth.
Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament and people;parliaments sit in chains forged by their constituency;the editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but mustwork with one hand tied behind him by party and patrons,and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind;no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth,regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of all kinds aremanacled servants of the public. We write frankly and fearlessly,but then we 'modify' before we print. In truth, every man andwoman and child has a master, and worries and frets in servitude;but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot had none.
The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pompof a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders whilethe vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reignwas over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river,she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot.
He could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whitherhe chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment saidthat that course was best. His movements were entirely free;he consulted no one, he received commands from nobody,he promptly resented even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the lawof the United States forbade him to listen to commandsor suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot necessarilyknew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell him.
So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute monarchwho was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words.
I have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenelyinto what seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captainstanding mutely by, filled with apprehension but powerlessto interfere. His interference, in that particular instance,might have been an excellent thing, but to permit it wouldhave been to establish a most pernicious precedent. It willeasily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless authority,that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days.
He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with markeddeference by all the officers and servants; and this deferentialspirit was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I thinkpilots were about the only people I ever knew who failed to show,in some degree, embarrassment in the presence of travelingforeign princes. But then, people in one's own grade of lifeare not usually embarrassing objects.
By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of commands.
It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape ofa request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order.
In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to NewOrleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days,on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the wharvesof St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard at work,except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up town,and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty.
The moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore;and they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing andeverything in readiness for another voyage.
When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation,he took pains to keep him. When wages were four hundred dollarsa month on the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captainto keep such a pilot in idleness, under full pay, three monthsat a time, while the river was frozen up. And one must rememberthat in those cheap times four hundred dollars was a salaryof almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore got such payas that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to.
When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our smallMissouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest,and treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under wageswas a thing which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated;especially if they belonged in the Missouri River in the heydayof that trade (Kansas times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip,which was equivalent to about eighteen hundred dollars a month.
Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out of the Illinois River,with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a couple of ornate and gildedMissouri River pilots--'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry,and shall want you about a month. How much will it be?'
'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'
'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages,and I'll divide!'
I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen wereimportant in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree)according to the dignity of the boat they were on.
For instance, it was a proud thing to be of the crew of suchstately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand Turk.'
Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boatswere distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they werewell aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offenseat a negro ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs.
Finally one of the managers bustled up to him and said--'Who IS you, any way? Who is you? dat's what Iwants to know!'
The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled himself upand threw that into his voice which showed that he knew he was not puttingon all those airs on a stinted capital.
'Who IS I? Who IS I? I let you know mighty quick who I is!
I want you niggers to understan' dat I fires de middle do'
[Door]> on de "Aleck Scott! " '
That was sufficient.
The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro,who aired his importance with balmy complacency,and was greatly courted by the circle in which he moved.
The young colored population of New Orleans were much givento flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets.
Somebody saw and heard something like the following,one evening, in one of those localities. A middle-aged negrowoman projected her head through a broken pane and shouted(very willing that the neighbors should hear and envy), 'YouMary Ann, come in de house dis minute! Stannin' out dah foolin'
'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber offn de "Gran' Turk"wants to conwerse wid you! '
My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot's peculiarofficial position placed him out of the reach of criticism or command,brings Stephen W---- naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot,a good fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in him.
He had a most irreverent independence, too, and was deliciouslyeasy-going and comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity,and even the most august wealth. He always had work, he neversaved a penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, he was in debtto every pilot on the river, and to the majority of the captains.
He could throw a sort of splendor around a bit of harum-scarum,devil-may-care piloting, that made it almost fascinating--but not to everybody. He made a trip with good old Captain Y----once, and was 'relieved' from duty when the boat got to New Orleans.
Somebody expressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y----shuddered at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin oldvoice piped out something like this:--'Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my boatfor the world--not for the whole world! He swears, he sings,he whistles, he yells--I never saw such an Injun to yell.
All times of the night--it never made any difference to him.
He would just yell that way, not for anything in particular,but merely on account of a kind of devilish comfort he got out of it.
I never could get into a sound sleep but he would fetch meout of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those dreadfulwar-whoops. A queer being--very queer being; no respectfor anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny."And he kept a fiddle, and a cat. He played execrably.
This seemed to distress the cat, and so the cat would howl.
Nobody could sleep where that man--and his family--was.
And reckless. There never was anything like it.
Now you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here,he brought my boat a-tilting down through those awful snagsat Chicot under a rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowinglike the very nation, at that! My officers will tell you so.
They saw it. And, sir, while he was a-tearing right downthrough those snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes and praying,I wish I may never speak again if he didn't pucker up his mouthand go to WHISTLING! Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals,can't you come out tonight, can't you come out to-night,can't you come out to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if wewere attending a funeral and weren't related to the corpse.
And when I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled down on meas if I was his child, and told me to run in the house and tryto be good, and not be meddling with my superiors!"Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out of workand as usual out of money. He laid steady siege to Stephen, who wasin a very 'close place,' and finally persuaded him to hire with himat one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just half wages,the captain agreeing not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contemptof all the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not more thana day out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captainwas boasting of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told.
Stephen winced, but said nothing. About the middle of the afternoonthe captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around,and looked a good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft at Stephen,but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to business.
The captain stood around a while in evident discomfort, and once or twiceseemed about to make a suggestion; but the etiquette of the river taughthim to avoid that sort of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace.
He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired to his apartments.
But soon he was out again, and apparently more perplexed than ever.
Presently he ventured to remark, with deference--'Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?'
'Well, I should say so! Bank-full IS a pretty liberal stage.'
'Seems to be a good deal of current here.'
'Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a mill-race.'
'Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the middle?'
'Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too careful with a steamboat.
It's pretty safe out here; can't strike any bottom here, you candepend on that.'
The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At this rate,he would probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis.
Next day he appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfullystanding up the middle of the river, fighting the whole vastforce of the Mississippi, and whistling the same placid tune.
This thing was becoming serious. In by the shore was a slower boatclipping along in the easy water and gaining steadily; she beganto make for an island chute; Stephen stuck to the middle of the river.
Speech was WRUNG from the captain. He said--'Mr. W----, don't that chute cut off a good deal of distance?'
'I think it does, but I don't know.'
'Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in it now to go through?'
'I expect there is, but I am not certain.'
'Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots on that boat yonder are goingto try it. Do you mean to say that you don't know as much as they do?'
'THEY! Why, THEY are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots!
But don't you be uneasy; I know as much as any man can affordto know for a hundred and twenty-five!'
The captain surrendered.
Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and showingthe rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of heels.
ONE day, on board the 'Aleck Scott,' my chief, Mr. Bixby,was crawling carefully through a close place at Cat Island,both leads going, and everybody holding his breath. The captain,a nervous, apprehensive man, kept still as long as he could,but finally broke down and shouted from the hurricane deck--'For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her steam!
She'll never raise the reef on this headway!'
For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have supposedthat no remark had been made. But five minutes later, when the dangerwas past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a consuming fury,and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever listened to.
No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's cause was weak;for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction quietly.
Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting,and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the fraternityof steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few words about anorganization which the pilots once formed for the protection of their guild.
It was curious and noteworthy in this, that it was perhaps the compactest,the completest, and the strongest commercial organization everformed among men.
For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month;but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased,the wages began to fall little by little. It was easy to discoverthe reason of this. Too many pilots were being 'made.' It was niceto have a 'cub,' a steersman, to do all the hard work for a coupleof years, gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked;all pilots and captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots. By andby it came to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman.
When a steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactoryto any two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for himby signing an application directed to the United States Inspector.
Nothing further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofsof capacity required.
Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presentlybegan to undermine the wages, in order to get berths.
Too late--apparently--the knights of the tiller perceivedtheir mistake. Plainly, something had to be done, and quickly;but what was to be the needful thing. A close organization.
Nothing else would answer. To compass this seemed an impossibility;so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped.
It was too likely to ruin whoever ventured to movein the matter. But at last about a dozen of the boldest--and some of them the best--pilots on the river launchedthemselves into the enterprise and took all the chances.
They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers,under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association;elected their officers, completed their organization,contributed capital, put 'association' wages up to two hundredand fifty dollars at once--and then retired to their homes,for they were promptly discharged from employment.
But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by-lawswhich had the seeds of propagation in them. For instance,all idle members of the association, in good standing,were entitled to a pension of twenty-five dollars per month.
This began to bring in one straggler after another from the ranksof the new-fledged pilots, in the dull (summer) season.
Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the initiationfee was only twelve dollars, and no dues requiredfrom the unemployed.
Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing coulddraw twenty-five dollars per month, and a certain sum for eachof their children. Also, the said deceased would be buriedat the association's expense. These things resurrected allthe superannuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley.
They came from farms, they came from interior villages, they camefrom everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays, in ambulances,--any way, so they got there. They paid in their twelve dollars,and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month,and calculate their burial bills.
By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class ones,were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of itand laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river.
Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent.
of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the supportof the association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed,and no one would employ them. Everybody was derisively gratefulto the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the wayand leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving;and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for aresult which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wagesas the busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figureof one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and insome cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlargeupon the fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a bodyof men not one of whom received a particle of benefit from it.
Some of the jokers used to call at the association rooms and havea good time chaffing the members and offering them the charityof taking them as steersmen for a trip, so that they could see whatthe forgotten river looked like. However, the association was content;or at least it gave no sign to the contrary. Now and then itcaptured a pilot who was 'out of luck,' and added him to its list;and these later additions were very valuable, for they were good pilots;the incompetent ones had all been absorbed before. As business freshened,wages climbed gradually up to two hundred and fifty dollars--the association figure--and became firmly fixed there; and stillwithout benefiting a member of that body, for no member was hired.
The hilarity at the association's expense burst all bounds, now.
There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had toput up with.
However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter approached,business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri,Illinois and Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring downto take a chance in the New Orleans trade. All of a suddenpilots were in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce.
The time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to have toaccept association pilots at last, yet captains and owners agreedthat there was no other way. But none of these outcasts offered!
So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:
they must be sought out and asked for their services.
Captain ---- was the first man who found it necessary to takethe dose, and he had been the loudest derider of the organization.
He hunted up one of the best of the association pilots and said--'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for alittle while, so I'll give in with as good a grace as I can.
I've come to hire you; get your trunk aboard right away.
I want to leave at twelve o'clock.'
'I don't know about that. Who is your other pilot?'
'I've got I. S----. Why?'
'I can't go with him. He don't belong to the association.'
'What!'
'It's so.'
'Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a wheel with one of the very bestand oldest pilots on the river because he don't belong to your association?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Well, if this isn't putting on airs! I supposed I was doing youa benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wantsa favor done. Are you acting under a law of the concern?'
'Yes.'
'Show it to me.'
So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretarysoon satisfied the captain, who said--'Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S---- for the entire season.'
'I will provide for you,' said the secretary. 'I will detail a pilotto go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve o'clock.'
'But if I discharge S----, he will come on me for the whole season's wages.'
'Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S----, captain.
We cannot meddle in your private affairs.'
The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end he had to dischargeS----, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an association pilotin his place. The laugh was beginning to turn the other way now.
Every day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every day some outragedcaptain discharged a non-association pet, with tears and profanity,and installed a hated association man in his berth. In a verylittle while, idle non-associationists began to be pretty plenty,brisk as business was, and much as their services were desired.
The laugh was shifting to the other side of their mouths most palpably.
These victims, together with the captains and owners, presently ceasedto laugh altogether, and began to rage about the revenge they would takewhen the passing business 'spurt' was over.
Soon all the laughers that were left were the ownersand crews of boats that had two non-association pilots.
But their triumph was not very long-lived. For this reason:
It was a rigid rule of the association that its members should never,under any circumstances whatever, give information about the channelto any 'outsider.' By this time about half the boats had nonebut association pilots, and the other half had none but outsiders.
At the first glance one would suppose that when it cameto forbidding information about the river these two partiescould play equally at that game; but this was not so.
At every good-sized town from one end of the river to the other,there was a 'wharf-boat' to land at, instead of a wharf or a pier.
Freight was stored in it for transportation; waiting passengers sleptin its cabins. Upon each of these wharf-boats the association'sofficers placed a strong box fastened with a peculiar lock which wasused in no other service but one--the United States mail service.
It was the letter-bag lock, a sacred governmental thing.
By dint of much beseeching the government had beenpersuaded to allow the association to use this lock.
Every association man carried a key which would open these boxes.
That key, or rather a peculiar way of holding it in the handwhen its owner was asked for river information by a stranger--for the success of the St. Louis and New Orleans associationhad now bred tolerably thriving branches in a dozen neighboringsteamboat trades--was the association man's sign and diplomaof membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producinga similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed,his question was politely ignored. From the association's secretaryeach member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks,printed like a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns;a bill-head worded something like this--STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.
JOHN SMITH MASTERPILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN.
+-------------------------------------------------------------+| CROSSINGS. | SOUNDINGS. | MARKS. | REMARKS. |+-------------------------------------------------------------+These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyageprogressed, and deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes.
For instance, as soon as the first crossing, out from St. Louis,was completed, the items would be entered upon the blank,under the appropriate headings, thus--'St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, headon dead cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first reef,then pull up square.' Then under head of Remarks: 'Go just outsidethe wrecks; this is important. New snag just where you straighten down;go above it.'
The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after addingto it the details of every crossing all the way down from St. Louis)took out and read half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers)concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis, posted himself thoroughly,returned them to the box, and went back aboard his boat again so armedagainst accident that he could not possibly get his boat into troublewithout bringing the most ingenious carelessness to his aid.
Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelveor thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day!
The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoalplace once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch itfor him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to run it.
His information about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If the reportsin the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind concerninga treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam-whistlein a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the signal wasanswered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were association men;and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all uncertainties were sweptaway by fresh information furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth andin minute detail.
The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St. Louiswas to take his final and elaborate report to the association parlorsand hang it up there,--after which he was free to visit his family.
In these parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discussingchanges in the channel, and the moment there was a fresh arrival,everybody stopped talking till this witness had told the newest newsand settled the latest uncertainty. Other craftsmen can 'sink the shop,'
sometimes, and interest themselves in other matters. Not so with a pilot;he must devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing else;for it would be small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next.
He has no time or words to waste if he would keep 'posted.'
But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular placeto meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports,none but chance and unsatisfactory ways of getting news.
The consequence was that a man sometimes had to run five hundredmiles of river on information that was a week or ten days old.
At a fair stage of the river that might have answered; but when thedead low water came it was destructive.
Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders beganto ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble,whereas accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men.
Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnishedexclusively with outsiders, and previously considered to be whollyindependent of the association and free to comfort themselveswith brag and laughter, began to feel pretty uncomfortable.
Still, they made a show of keeping up the brag, until one black daywhen every captain of the lot was formally ordered to immediatelydischarge his outsiders and take association pilots in their stead.
And who was it that had the dashing presumption to do that? Alas, it camefrom a power behind the throne that was greater than the throne itself.
It was the underwriters!
It was no time to 'swap knives.' Every outsider had to take his trunkashore at once. Of course it was supposed that there was collusionbetween the association and the underwriters, but this was not so.
The latter had come to comprehend the excellence of the 'report' systemof the association and the safety it secured, and so they had made theirdecision among themselves and upon plain business principles.
There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth inthe camp of the outsiders now. But no matter, there wasbut one course for them to pursue, and they pursued it.
They came forward in couples and groups, and proffered theirtwelve dollars and asked for membership. They were surprisedto learn that several new by-laws had been long ago added.
For instance, the initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars;that sum must be tendered, and also ten per cent.
of the wages which the applicant had received each and everymonth since the founding of the association. In many cases thisamounted to three or four hundred dollars. Still, the associationwould not entertain the application until the money was present.
Even then a single adverse vote killed the application.
Every member had to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in person and before witnesses;so it took weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilotswere so long absent on voyages. However, the repentantsinners scraped their savings together, and one by one,by our tedious voting process, they were added to the fold.
A time came, at last, when only about ten remained outside.
They said they would starve before they would apply.
They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody could ventureto employ them.
By and by the association published the fact that upon a certaindate the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars per month.
All the branch associations had grown strong, now, and the RedRiver one had advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month.
Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded, in view of these things,and made application. There was another new by-law, by this time,which required them to pay dues not only on all the wages theyhad received since the association was born, but also on what theywould have received if they had continued at work up to the timeof their application, instead of going off to pout in idleness.
It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them, but itwas accomplished at last. The most virulent sinner of thisbatch had stayed out and allowed 'dues' to accumulate againsthim so long that he had to send in six hundred and twenty-fivedollars with his application.
The association had a good bank account now, and was very strong.
There was no longer an outsider. A by-law was added forbiddingthe reception of any more cubs or apprentices for five years;after which time a limited number would be taken, not by individuals,but by the association, upon these terms: the applicant mustnot be less than eighteen years old, and of respectable familyand good character; he must pass an examination as to education,pay a thousand dollars in advance for the privilege of becomingan apprentice, and must remain under the commands of the associationuntil a great part of the membership (more than half, I think)should be willing to sign his application for a pilot's license.
All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from theirmasters and adopted by the association. The president and secretarydetailed them for service on one boat or another, as they chose,and changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules.
If a pilot could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance,one of the cubs would be ordered to go with him.
The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association'sfinancial resources. The association attended its ownfunerals in state, and paid for them. When occasion demanded,it sent members down the river upon searches for the bodiesof brethren lost by steamboat accidents; a search of this kindsometimes cost a thousand dollars.
The association procured a charter and went into the insurancebusiness, also. It not only insured the lives of its members,but took risks on steamboats.
The organization seemed indestructible. It was the tightest monopolyin the world. By the United States law, no man could becomea pilot unless two duly licensed pilots signed his application;and now there was nobody outside of the association competentto sign. Consequently the making of pilots was at an end.
Every year some would die and others become incapacitated by ageand infirmity; there would be no new ones to take their places.
In time, the association could put wages up to any figure it chose;and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry the thingtoo far and provoke the national government into amendingthe licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit,since there would be no help for it.
The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay betweenthe association and absolute power; and at last this one was removed.
Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberatelydid it themselves. When the pilots' association announced,months beforehand, that on the first day of September, 1861,wages would be advanced to five hundred dollars per month, the ownersand captains instantly put freights up a few cents, and explainedto the farmers along the river the necessity of it, by calling theirattention to the burdensome rate of wages about to be established.
It was a rather slender argument, but the farmers did not seem to detect it.
It looked reasonable to them that to add five cents freight on a bushelof corn was justifiable under the circumstances, overlooking the factthat this advance on a cargo of forty thousand sacks was a good dealmore than necessary to cover the new wages.
So, straightway the captains and owners got up an associationof their own, and proposed to put captains' wages up to fivehundred dollars, too, and move for another advance in freights.
It was a novel idea, but of course an effect which had beenproduced once could be produced again. The new association decreed(for this was before all the outsiders had been takeninto the pilots' association) that if any captain employeda non-association pilot, he should be forced to discharge him,and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of theseheavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grewstrong enough to exercise full authority over its membership;but that all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilotsto decree that no member of their corporation should serve undera non-association captain; but this proposition was declined.
The pilots saw that they would be backed up by the captains andthe underwriters anyhow, and so they wisely refrained from enteringinto entangling alliances.
As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactestmonopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply indestructible.
And yet the days of its glory were numbered. First, the newrailroad stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky,to Northern railway centers, began to divert the passenger travelfrom the steamers; next the war came and almost entirely annihilatedthe steamboating industry during several years, leaving most ofthe pilots idle, and the cost of living advancing all the time;then the treasurer of the St. Louis association put his handinto the till and walked off with every dollar of the ample fund;and finally, the railroads intruding everywhere, there was littlefor steamers to do, when the war was over, but carry freights;so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast introduced the planof towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tailof a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the twinkling of an eye,as it were, the association and the noble science of piloting werethings of the dead and pathetic past!
IT was always the custom for the boats to leave NewOrleans between four and five o'clock in the afternoon.
From three o'clock onward they would be burning rosin and pitch pine(the sign of preparation), and so one had the picturesque spectacleof a rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending columnsof coal-black smoke; a colonnade which supported a sable roof ofthe same smoke blended together and spreading abroad over the city.
Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack-staff,and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern.
Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with morethan usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrelsand boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboardthe stage-planks, belated passengers were dodging and skippingamong these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastlecompanion way alive, but having their doubts about it;women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep upwith husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies,and making a failure of it by losing their heads in the whirland roar and general distraction; drays and baggage-vans wereclattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now andthen getting blocked and jammed together, and then during tenseconds one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguelyand dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch,from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other,was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freightinto the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroesthat worked them were roaring such songs as 'De Las' Sack!
De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable exaltation by the chaosof turmoil and racket that was driving everybody else mad.
By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamerswould be packed and black with passengers. The 'last bells'
would begin to clang, all down the line, and then the powwowseemed to double; in a moment or two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese gongs, with the cry,'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'! '--and behold,the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore,overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard.
One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was beinghauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clingingto the end of it with teeth, nails, and everything else,and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild springshoreward over his head.
Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream,leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of steamers.
Citizens crowd the decks of boats that are not to go, in orderto see the sight. Steamer after steamer straightens herself up,gathers all her strength, and presently comes swinging by,under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying,black smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands(usually swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle,the best 'voice' in the lot towering from the midst(being mounted on the capstan), waving his hat or a flag,and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boomand the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and huzza!
Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession goeswinging its flight up the river.
In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race,with a big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hearthe crews sing, especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastlelit up with the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun.
The public always had an idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the oppositewas the case--that is, after the laws were passed which restrictedeach boat to just so many pounds of steam to the square inch.
No engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race.
He was constantly on the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things.
The dangerous place was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsedaround and allowed chips to get into the 'doctor' and shut off the watersupply from the boilers.
In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriouslyfleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was setfor it several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the wholeMississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement. Politics andthe weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race.
As the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready.
Every encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surfaceto wind or water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do without it.
The 'spars,' and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore,and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground.
When the 'Eclipse' and the 'A. L. Shotwell' ran their great race manyyears ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding offthe fanciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that forthat one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head shaved.
But I always doubted these things.
If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a half feetforward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her manifest after that.
Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not only add weight but theynever will 'trim boat.' They always run to the side when there is anythingto see, whereas a conscientious and experienced steamboatman would stick tothe center of the boat and part his hair in the middle with a spirit level.
No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers wouldstop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and go.'
Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and these werekept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's warning.
Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly done.
The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness,the two great steamers back into the stream, and lie therejockeying a moment, and apparently watching each other'sslightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping,the pent steam shrieking through safety-valves, the black smokerolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air.
People, people everywhere; the shores, the house-tops,the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you knowthat the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to befringed with humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles,to welcome these racers.
Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipesof both steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroesmounted on capstans wave their small flags above the massed crewson the forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a fewwaiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come!
Brass bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders fromthe shores, and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.
Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cordwood-boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a coupleof those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each;by the time you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will bewondering what has become of that wood.
Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after day.
They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are notall alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of the boats hasa 'lightning' pilot, whose 'partner' is a trifle his inferior, you can tellwhich one is on watch by noting whether that boat has gained ground or lostsome during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest pilot can delay a boatif he has not a fine genius for steering. Steering is a very high art.
One must not keep a rudder dragging across a boat's stem if he wants to get upthe river fast.
There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was ona boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to losevaluable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for usto get by. This was at still rarer intervals. I had the documentsfor these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been mislaid.
This boat, the 'John J. Roe,' was so slow that when she finally sunkin Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it.
That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the record,any way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had prettyexciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things.
One trip, however, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen days.
But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three timesin Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long. A 'reach' is a pieceof straight river, and of course the current drives through such a placein a pretty lively way.
That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days(three hundred and forty miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell'
did it in one. We were nine days out, in the chute of 63(seven hundred miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' wentthere in two days. Something over a generation ago,a boat called the 'J. M. White' went from New Orleansto Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes.
In 1853 the 'Eclipse' made the same trip in three days,three hours, and twenty minutes.
Some authorities add 1 hour and 16 minutes to this.]> In1870 the 'R. E. Lee' did it in three days and ONE hour.
This last is called the fastest trip on record.
I will try to show that it was not. For this reason:
the distance between New Orleans and Cairo, when the 'J. M. White'
ran it, was about eleven hundred and six miles; consequently heraverage speed was a trifle over fourteen miles per hour.
In the 'Eclipse's' day the distance between the two ports had becomereduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her averagespeed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles per hour.
In the 'R. E. Lee's' time the distance had diminishedto about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently heraverage was about fourteen and one-eighth miles per hour.
Therefore the 'Eclipse's' was conspicuously the fastest time that hasever been made.
THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUSTRIPS(From Commodore Rollingpin's Almanack.)FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERSFROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ--268 MILESD. H. M.
1814 Orleans made the run in 6 6 401814 Comet " " 5 101815 Enterprise " " 4 11 201817 Washington " " 41817 Shelby " " 3 201818 Paragon " " 3 81828 Tecumseh " " 3 1 201834 Tuscarora " " 1 211838 Natchez " " 1 171840 Ed. Shippen " " 1 81842 Belle of the West " 1 181844 Sultana " " 19 451851 Magnolia " " 19 501853 A. L. Shotwell " " 19 491853 Southern Belle " " 20 31853 Princess (No. 4) " 20 261853 Eclipse " " 19 471855 Princess (New) " " 18 531855 Natchez (New) " " 17 301856 Princess (New) " " 17 301870 Natchez " " 17 171870 R. E. Lee " " 17 11FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO--1,024 MILESD. H. M.
1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 6 441852 Reindeer " " 3 12 451853 Eclipse " " 3 4 41853 A. L. Shotwell " " 3 3 401869 Dexter " " 3 6 201870 Natchez " " 3 4 341870 R. E. Lee " " 3 1FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE--1,440 MILESD. H. M.
1815 Enterprise made the run in 25 2 401817 Washington " " 251817. Shelby " " 20 4 201818 Paragon " " 18 101828 Tecumseh " " 8 41834 Tuscarora " " 7 161837 Gen. Brown " " 6 221837 Randolph " " 6 221837 Empress " " 6 171837 Sultana " " 6 151840 Ed. Shippen " " 5 141842 Belle of the West " 6 141843 Duke of Orleans" " 5 231844 Sultana " " 5 121849 Bostona " " 5 81851 Belle Key " " 3 4 231852 Reindeer " " 4 20 451852 Eclipse " " 4 191853 A. L. Shotwell " " 4 10 201853 Eclipse " " 4 9 30FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DONALDSONVILLE--78 MILESH. M.
1852 A. L. Shotwell made the run in 5 421852 Eclipse " " 5 421854 Sultana " " 4 511860 Atlantic " " 5 111860 Gen. Quitman " " 5 61865 Ruth " " 4 431870 R. E. Lee " " 4 59FROM NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS--1,218 MILESD. H. M.
1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 23 91849 Missouri " " 4 191869 Dexter " " 4 91870 Natchez " " 3 21 581870 R. E. Lee " " 3 18 14FROM LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI--141 MILESD. H. M.
1819 Gen. Pike made the run in 1 161819 Paragon " " 1 14 201822 Wheeling Packet " " 1 101837 Moselle " " 121843 Duke of Orleans " " 121843 Congress " " 12 201846 Ben Franklin (No. 6) " 11 451852 Alleghaney " " 10 381852 Pittsburgh " " 10 231853 Telegraph No. 3 " " 9 52FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS-750--MILESD. H. M.
1843 Congress made the run in 2 11854 Pike " " 1 231854 Northerner " " 1 22 301855 Southemer " " 1 19FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURGH--490 MILESD. H.
1850 Telegraph No. 2 made the run in 1 171851 Buckeye State " " 1 161852 Pittsburgh " " 1 15FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON--30 MILESD. H1853 Altona made the run in 1 351876 Golden Eagle " " 1 371876 War Eagle " " 1 37MISCELLANEOUS RUNSIn June, 1859, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Louisiana,made the run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hoursand 20 minutes, the best time on record.
In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Packet Company,made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 miles) in 2 days and 20 hours.
Never was beaten.
In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph,on the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas.
H. Lucas, Andy Wineland, Master, made the same run in 60 hoursand 57 minutes. The distance between the ports is 600 miles,and when the difficulties of navigating the turbulent Missouriare taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucasdeserves especial mention.
THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEEThe time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louisin 1870, in her famous race with the Natchez, is the beston record, and, inasmuch as the race created a national interest,we give below her time table from port to port.
Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30th, 1870, at 4 o'clockand 55 minutes, p.m.; reachedD. H. M.
Carrollton 27Harry Hills 1 00Red Church 1 39Bonnet Carre 2 38College Point 3 50Donaldsonville 4 59Plaquemine 7 05Baton Rouge 8 25Bayou Sara 10 26Red River 12 56Stamps 13 56Bryaro 15 51Hinderson's 16 29Natchez 17 11Cole's Creek 19 21Waterproof 18 53Rodney 20 45St. Joseph 21 02Grand Gulf 22 06Hard Times 22 18Half Mile below Warrenton 1Vicksburg 1 38Milliken's Bend 1 2 37Bailey's 1 3 48Lake Providence 1 5 47Greenville 1 10 55Napoleon 1 16 22White River 1 16 56Australia 1 19Helena 1 23 25Half Mile Below St. Francis 2Memphis 2 6 9Foot of Island 37 2 9Foot of Island 26 2 13 30Tow-head, Island 14 2 17 23New Madrid 2 19 50Dry Bar No. 10 2 20 37Foot of Island 8 2 21 25Upper Tow-head--Lucas Bend 3Cairo 3 1St. Louis 3 18 14The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4th, 1870--6 hoursand 36 minutes ahead of the Natchez. The officers of the Natchez claimed7 hours and 1 minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery.
The R. E. Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez was incharge of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P. Leathers.