At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my headfull of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiouslyinanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as Icould shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of these nameswithout leaving out more than ten miles of river in every fifty,I began to feel that I could take a boat down to New Orleans if Icould make her skip those little gaps. But of course my complacencycould hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air,before Mr. Bixby would think of something to fetch it down again.

One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler--'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm.

I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had anyparticular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many roundsof ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable andeven remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone.

That word 'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more thanthirty-four. I waited. By and by he said--'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly.

It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.

Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn'tthe same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.'

'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'

'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you knowthe shape of it. You can't see it.'

'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variationsof shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shapeof the front hall at home?'

'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man everdid know the shapes of the halls in his own house.'

'I wish I was dead!'

'Now I don't want to discourage you, but----'

'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'

'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any gettingaround it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadowsthat if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you wouldclaw away from every bunch of timber, because you would takethe black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you wouldbe getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch.

You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when youought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snagin one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is,and the shape of the river tells you when you are coming to it.

Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very differentshape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night.

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