WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and someother delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about twoweeks in making the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans.

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.

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