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.

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