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