the reason for their choice must be traced to some other source.
Doubtless they chose farming because that life is privateand secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot-house hermitage. And doubtless they also choseit because on a thousand nights of black storm and dangerthey had noted the twinkling lights of solitary farm-houses,as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves the serenityand security and coziness of such refuges at such times,and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peacefullife as the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, andat last enjoy.
But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished anybodywith their successes. Their farms do not support them: they supporttheir farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river annually,about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next frost.
Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseedout of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter.
In this way he pays the debts which his farming has achieved duringthe agricultural season. So his river bondage is but half broken;he is still the river's slave the hardest half of the year.
One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it.
He knew a trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperizehis farm by applying his personal ignorance to working it.
No, he put the farm into the hands of an agriculturalexpert to be worked on shares--out of every three loadsof corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third.
But at the end of the season the pilot received no corn.
The expert explained that his share was not reached. The farmproduced only two loads.
Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases.
Captain Montgomery, whom I had steered for when he was a pilot,commanded the Confederate fleet in the great battle before Memphis;when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought his way througha squad of soldiers, and made a gallant and narrow escape.
He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his serenity.
Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was bringingthe boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting ordersfrom the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stoppedthe wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased.
It was evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched uponthe big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captainwas in it, but such was not the case. The captain was very strict;therefore I knew better than to touch a bell without orders.
My duty was to hold the boat steadily on her calamitous course,and leave the consequences to take care of themselves--which I did.
So we went plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting closerand closer--the crash was bound to come very soon--and still that hatnever budged; for alas, the captain was napping in the texas....
Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable.
It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear in timeto see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walkinginto the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said,with heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did;but a trifle late, however, for the next moment we went smashing throughthat other boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket.
The captain never said a word to me about the matter afterwards,except to remark that I had done right, and that he hoped I would nothesitate to act in the same way again in like circumstances.
One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the riverhad died a very honorable death. His boat caught fire,and he remained at the wheel until he got her safe to land.
Then he went out over the breast-board with his clothingin flames, and was the last person to get ashore.
He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours,and his was the only life lost.
The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of thissort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a like fatewhich came within a second or two of being fatally too late; BUT THEREIS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE WHILE BYREMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM DESTRUCTION.
It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth while toput it in italics, too.
The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perilsconnected with a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sortof death to the deep dishonor of deserting his postwhile there is any possibility of his being useful in it.
And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated,that even young and but half-tried pilots can be depended uponto stick to the wheel, and die there when occasion requires.
In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow who perishedat the wheel a great many years ago, in White River, to savethe lives of other men. He said to the captain that if the firewould give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance away,all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bankof the river would be to insure the loss of many lives.
He reached the bar and grounded the boat in shallow water;but by that time the flames had closed around him,and in escaping through them he was fatally burned.
He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as becamea pilot to reply--'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay,no one will be lost but me. I will stay.'
There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the pilot's.
There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that Memphis graveyard.
While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I started out to look for it,but our time was so brief that I was obliged to turn back before myobject was accomplished.
The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that several others whomI had known had fallen in the war--one or two of them shotdown at the wheel; that another and very particular friend,whom I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his housein New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some moneyin a remote part of the city, and had never been seen again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that BenThornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I usedto quarrel with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless,reckless creature he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief.
An Arkansas passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day,and chained him to a life-boat on the hurricane deck.
Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till he had gone there and unchainedthe bear, to 'see what he would do.' He was promptly gratified.
The bear chased him around and around the deck, for miles and miles,with two hundred eager faces grinning through the railingsfor audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tailand went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turnedout with alacrity, and left the bear in sole possession.
He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation.
He ranged the whole boat--visited every part of it, with anadvance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voicelessvacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody elsewas in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel,from heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time.
He saw the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer;ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor.
Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured,but the other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown intothe river from the wheel, and disabled. The water wasvery cold; he clung to a cotton bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he was rescuedby some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck.
They tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton,and warmed the life back into him, and got him safe to Memphis.
He is one of Bixby's pilots on the 'Baton Rouge' now.
Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bitof romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless.
When I knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous,goodhearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuouslypromising to fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing.
In a Western city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife;and in their family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant.
The young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was notGeorge Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposesof this narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned;and the old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed,they lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.
Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed them.
After that, they were able to continue their sin without concealment.
By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he followed after her.
Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among the mournerssat the two young sinners. The will was opened and solemnly read.
It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth to MRS.
GEORGE JOHNSON!
And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then,and did a very foolish thing: married themselves before anobscure Justice of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing.
That did no sort of good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposedthe fraudful date with extreme suddenness and surprising ease,and carried off the fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately,and legally, and irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage,but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves withal.
Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base sotelling a situation.
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