The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat’s lantern for the buoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying A Pilots Needs
the buoy he fell away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a hundred yards below it BUT I AM WANDERING FROM WHAT I was intending to do, that and a little to one side of the steamer’s course, headed the is, make plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chap-sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some ters, some of the peculiar requirements of the science of pi-time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when loting. First of all, there is one faculty which a pilot must he judged that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that incessantly cultivate until he has brought it to absolute per-the buoy was gone, but supposed that the steamer had al-fection. Nothing short of perfection will do. That faculty is ready run over it; he went on with his talk; he noticed that memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is so the steamer was getting very close on him, but that was the and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely, for
‘exact’ sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to the old times, if he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed upon him
“I think,” instead of the vigorous one “I know!” One can-that she was trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern not easily realize what a tremendous thing it is to know ev-for the buoy-light; so he sang out, “Stand by to spring for ery trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river and know the guard, men!” and the next instant the jump was made.
it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every house and window and door 75
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain and lamp-post and big and little sign by heart, and know and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot’s are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous fa-in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a cility in the handling of it. I make this comparison deliber-tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot’s ately, and believe I am not expanding the truth when I do it.
knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head.
Many will think my figure too strong, but pilots will not.
And then if you will go on until you know every street cross-And how easily and comfortably the pilot’s memory does ing, the character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, its work; how placidly effortless is its way; how unconsiously and the varying depth of mud in each of those numberless it lays up its vast stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must know loses or mislays a single valuable package of them all! Take in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, an instance. Let a leadsman cry, “Half twain! half twain! half if you will take half of the signs in that long street, and change twain! half twain! half twain!” until it become as monoto-theeir places once a month, and still manage to know their nous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be going on new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking, these repeated changes without making any mistakes, you and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in will understand what is required of a pilot’s peerless memory the midst of this endless string of half twains let a single by the fickle Mississippi.
“quarter twain!” be interjected, without emphasis, and then I think a pilot’s memory is about the most wonderful thing the half twain cry go on again, just as before: two or three in the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the boat’s and be able to recite them glibly, forward or backward, or position in the river when that quarter twain was uttered, begin at random anywhere in the book and recite both ways and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and 76
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same the boat there and put her in that same spot again yourself!
man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten The cry of ‘quarter twain’ did not really take his mind from chances to one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things his talk, but his trained faculties instantly photographed the can be done with the human memory if you will devote it bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid up the impor-faithfully to one particular line of business.
tant details for future reference without requiring any assis-At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri tance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talk-River, my chief, Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more ing with a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a than a thousand miles of that stream with an ease and rapid-monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple ity that were astonishing. When he had seen each division of blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, once in the daytime and once at night, his education was so A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you nearly complete that he took out a ‘daylight’ license; a few would not be able to state, two or three weeks afterward, trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects and night—and he ranked A 1, too.
you were passing at the moment it was done. But you could Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a if your memory had been patiently and laboriously trained pilot whose feats of memory were a constant marvel to me.
to do that sort of thing mechanically.
However, his memory was born in him, I think, not built.
Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and For instance, somebody would mention a name. Instantly piloting will develop it into a very colossus of capability. But Mr. Brown would break in—
only in the matters it is daily drilled in. A time would come
“Oh, I knew him. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a when the man’s faculties could not help noticing landmarks little scar on the side of his throat, like a splinter under the and soundings, and his memory could not help holding on flesh. He was only in the Southern trade six months. That 77
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain was thirteen years ago. I made a trip with him. There was And so on, by the hour, the man’s tongue would go. He five feet in the upper river then; the ‘Henry Blake’ grounded could not forget any thing. It was simply impossible. The at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the most trivial details remained as distinct and luminous in his
‘George Elliott’ unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the head, after they had lain there for years, as the most memo-
‘Sunflower’—”
rable events. His was not simply a pilot’s memory; its grasp
“Why, the ‘Sunflower’ didn’t sink until—” was universal. If he were talking about a trifling letter he
“I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver the 2nd of December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his you the entire screed from memory. And then without ob-brother John was first clerk; and it was his first trip in her, serving that he was departing from the true line of his talk, too; Tom Jones told me these things a week afterward in he was more than likely to hurl in a long-drawn parentheti-New Orleans; he was first mate of the ‘Sunflower.’ Captain cal biography of the writer of that letter; and you were lucky Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of the next year, indeed if he did not take up that writer’s relatives, one by and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died two one, and give you their biographies, too.
years after 3rd of March,—erysipelas. I never saw either of Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all the Hardys,—they were Alleghany River men,—but people occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distin-who knew them told me all these things. And they said Cap-guish an interesting circumstance from an uninteresting one.
tain Hardy wore yarn socks winter and summer just the same, As a talker, he is bound to clog his narrative with tiresome and his first wife’s name was Jane Shook—she was from New details and make himself an insufferable bore. Moreover, he England—and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little grain of was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown was Horton before she was married.”
would start out with the honest intention of telling you a 78
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain vastly funny anecdote about a dog. He would be ‘so full of efficacy of prayer as a means of grace. And the original first laugh’ that he could hardly begin; then his memory would mention would be all you had learned about that dog, after start with the dog’s breed and personal appearance; drift into all this waiting and hungering.
a history of his owner; of his owner’s family, with descrip-A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher tions of weddings and burials that had occurred in it, to-qualities which he must also have. He must have good and gether with recitals of congratulatory verses and obituary quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that poetry provoked by the same: then this memory would rec-no peril can shake. Give a man the merest trifle of pluck to ollect that one of these events occurred during the celebrated start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he cannot
“hard winter” of such and such a year, and a minute descrip-be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but tion of that winter would follow, along with the names of one cannot quite say the same for judgment. Judgment is a people who were frozen to death, and statistics showing the matter of brains, and a man must start with a good stock of high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork and hay that article or he will never succeed as a pilot.
would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder would sug-The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the gest cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the time, but it does not reach a high and satisfactory condition circus and certain celebrated bare-back riders; the transition until some time after the young pilot has been “standing his from the circus to the menagerie was easy and natural; from own watch,” alone and under the staggering weight of all the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course the responsibilities connected with the position. When an the heathen savages would suggest religion; and at the end apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted with of three or four hours’ tedious jaw, the watch would change, the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his steam-and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering ex-boat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it tracts from sermons he had heard years before about the is his courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot 79
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain steps out and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it I should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid was the other man’s. He discovers that the article has been of any crossing in the lot, in the day- time, was a thing too left out of his own cargo altogether. The whole river is bris-preposterous for contemplation. Well, one matchless tling with exigencies in a moment; he is not prepared for summer’s day I was bowling down the bend above island 66, them; he does not know how to meet them; all his knowl-brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as high as a edge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white giraffe’s, when Mr. Bixby said—
as a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely
“I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next train these cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in crossing?”
the face a little more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and play a friendly swindle upon the candidate.
simplest crossing in the whole river. One couldn’t come to Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years any harm, whether he ran it right or not; and as for depth, afterward I used to blush even in my sleep when I thought there never had been any bottom there. I knew all this, per-of it. I had become a good steersman; so good, indeed, that fectly well.
I had all the work to do on our watch, night and day; Mr.
“Know how to run it? Why, I can run it with my eyes Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did was to shut.”
take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly
“How much water is there in it?”
bad crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed,
“Well, that is an odd question. I couldn’t get bottom there play gentleman of leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and col-with a church steeple.”
lect the wages. The lower river was about bank-full, and if
“You think so, do you?”
anybody had questioned my ability to run any crossing be-The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That tween Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, was what Mr. Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying 80
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain anything more. I began to imagine all sorts of things. Mr.
seized the bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent somebody down to dropped it once more; clutched it tremblingly one again, the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the and pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear the stroke leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and both to-officers, and then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a gether—
smoke-stack where he could observe results. Presently the
“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!” captain stepped out on the hurricane deck; next the chief This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a strag-squirrel; but I would hardly get the boat started to port be-gler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head fore I would see new dangers on that side, and away I would of the island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down spin to the other; only to find perils accumulating to star-there under my nose. I began to wonder what the trouble board, and be crazy to get to port again. Then came the was. As I started across, the captain glanced aloft at me and leadsman’s sepulchral cry—
said, with a sham uneasiness in his voice—
“D-e-e-p four!”
“Where is Mr. Bixby?”
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took
“Gone below, sir.”
my breath away.
But that did the business for me. My imagination began
“M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!...
to construct dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied Half twain!”
faster than I could keep the run of them. All at once I imag-This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the ined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of coward agony engines.
that surged through me then came near dislocating every
“Quarter twain! Quarter twain! MARK twain!” joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I 81
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my
“Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or any-hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.
body else to shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try
“Quarter LESS twain! Nine and a HALF!” to remember that. And another thing: when you get into a We were DRAWING nine! My hands were in a nerveless dangerous place, don’t turn coward. That isn’t going to help flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew matters any.”
to the speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer—
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet
“Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often back the immortal SOUL out of her!”
had to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular dis-I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there taste for. It was, “Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!” stood Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of hu-Chapter 14
miliating laughter. I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the lead, set the Rank and Dignity of Piloting
boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said—
“It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN’T it? I IN MY PRECEDING CHAPTERS I have tried, by going into the suppose I’ll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to minutiae of the science of piloting, to carry the reader step heave the lead at the head of 66.”
by step to a comprehension of what the science consists of;
“Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t; for and at the same time I have tried to show him that it is a I want you to learn something by that experience. Didn’t very curious and wonderful science, too, and very worthy of you KNOW there was no bottom in that crossing?” his attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no
“Yes, sir, I did.”
surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than 82
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain any I have followed since, and I took a measureless pride in whither he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his it. The reason is plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only judgment said that that course was best. His movements were unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived entirely free; he consulted no one, he received commands in the earth. Kings are but the hampered servants of parlia-from nobody, he promptly resented even the merest sugges-ment and people; parliaments sit in chains forged by their tions. Indeed, the law of the United States forbade him to constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be indepen-listen to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that dent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by the pilot necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than party and patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-anybody could tell him. So here was the novelty of a king thirds of his mind; no clergyman is a free man and may without a keeper, an absolute monarch who was absolute in speak the whole truth, regardless of his parish’s opinions; sober truth and not by a fiction of words. I have seen a boy writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We of eighteen taking a great steamer serenely into what seemed write frankly and fearlessly, but then we ‘modify’ before we almost certain destruction, and the aged captain standing print. In truth, every man and woman and child has a mas-mutely by, filled with apprehension but powerless to interter, and worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write fere. His interference, in that particular instance, might have of, the Mississippi pilot had none. The captain could stand been an excellent thing, but to permit it would have been to upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp of a very brief au-establish a most pernicious precedent. It will easily be guessed, thority, and give him five or six orders while the vessel backed considering the pilot’s boundless authority, that he was a into the stream, and then that skipper’s reign was over. The great personage in the old steamboating days. He was treated moment that the boat was under way in the river, she was with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked def-under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He erence by all the officers and servants; and this deferential could do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and spirit was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I 83
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain think pilots were about the only people I ever knew who have known a captain to keep such a pilot in idleness, under failed to show, in some degree, embarrassment in the pres-full pay, three months at a time, while the river was frozen ence of traveling foreign princes. But then, people in one’s up. And one must remember that in those cheap times four own grade of life are not usually embarrassing objects.
hundred dollars was a salary of almost inconceivable splen-By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the dor. Few men on shore got such pay as that, and when they form of commands. It ‘gravels’ me, to this day, to put my did they were mightily looked up to. When pilots from ei-will in the weak shape of a request, instead of launching it in ther end of the river wandered into our small Missouri vil-the crisp language of an order. In those old days, to load a lage, they were sought by the best and the fairest, and treated steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New Orleans and back, with exalted respect. Lying in port under wages was a thing and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days, on which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated; espe-an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the cially if they belonged in the Missouri River in the heyday wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on of that trade (Kansas times), and got nine hundred dollars a board was hard at work, except the two pilots; they did noth-trip, which was equivalent to about eighteen hundred dol-ing but play gentleman up town, and receive the same wages lars a month. Here is a conversation of that day. A chap out for it as if they had been on duty. The moment the boat of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub, accosts a touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore; and they couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots—
were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing
“Gentlemen, I’ve got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and everything in readiness for another voyage.
and shall want you about a month. How much will it be?” When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high
“Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.”
reputation, he took pains to keep him. When wages were
“Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your four hundred dollars a month on the Upper Mississippi, I wages, and I’ll divide!”
84
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen The barber of the “Grand Turk” was a spruce young negro, were important in landsmen’s eyes (and in their own, too, in who aired his importance with balmy complacency, and was a degree) according to the dignity of the boat they were on.
greatly courted by the circle in which he moved. The young For instance, it was a proud thing to be of the crew of such colored population of New Orleans were much given to flirt-stately craft as the “Aleck Scott” or the “Grand Turk.” Negro ing, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. Some-firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats body saw and heard something like the following, one were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they evening, in one of those localities. A middle-aged negro were well aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave woman projected her head through a broken pane and offense at a negro ball in New Orleans by putting on a good shouted (very willing that the neighbors should hear and many airs. Finally one of the managers bustled up to him envy), ‘You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute! Stannin’
and said—
out dah foolin’ “long wid dat low trash, an’ heah’s de barber
“Who IS you, any way? Who is you? dat’s what I wants to offn de ‘Gran’ Turk’ wants to conwerse wid you!” know!”
My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot’s pe-The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled culiar official position placed him out of the reach of criti-himself up and threw that into his voice which showed that cism or command, brings Stephen W—— naturally to my he knew he was not putting on all those airs on a stinted mind. He was a gifted pilot, a good fellow, a tireless talker, capital.
and had both wit and humor in him. He had a most irrever-
“Who IS I? Who IS I? I let you know mighty quick who I ent independence, too, and was deliciously easy-going and is! I want you niggers to understan’ dat I fires de middle do’
comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity, and even on de ‘Aleck Scott!’”
the most august wealth. He always had work, he never saved That was sufficient.
a penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, he was in debt 85
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain to every pilot on the river, and to the majority of the cap-would howl. Nobody could sleep where that man—and his tains. He could throw a sort of splendor around a bit of family—was. And reckless. There never was anything like it.
harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting, that made it almost Now you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting fascinating—but not to everybody. He made a trip with good here, he brought my boat a-tilting down through those aw-old Captain Y—— once, and was ‘relieved’ from duty when ful snags at Chicot under a rattling head of steam, and the the boat got to New Orleans. Somebody expressed surprise wind a-blowing like the very nation, at that! My officers will at the discharge. Captain Y—— shuddered at the mere men-tell you so. They saw it. And, sir, while he was a-tearing tion of Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice piped out right down through those snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes something like this:—
and praying, I wish I may never speak again if he didn’t
“Why, bless me! I wouldn’t have such a wild creature on pucker up his mouth and go to whistling! Yes, sir; whistling my boat for the world—not for the whole world! He swears,
‘Buffalo gals, can’t you come out tonight, can’t you come out he sings, he whistles, he yells—I never saw such an Injun to to-night, can’t you come out to-night;’ and doing it as calmly yell. All times of the night—it never made any difference to as if we were attending a funeral and weren’t related to the him. He would just yell that way, not for anything in par-corpse. And when I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled ticular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish comfort down on me as if I was his child, and told me to run in the he got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but he house and try to be good, and not be meddling with my would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of superiors!”
those dreadful war-whoops. A queer being—very queer be-Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Oring; no respect for anything or anybody. Sometimes he called leans out of work and as usual out of money. He laid steady me ‘Johnny.’ And he kept a fiddle, and a cat. He played siege to Stephen, who was in a very “close place,” and finally execrably. This seemed to distress the cat, and so the cat persuaded him to hire with him at one hundred and twenty-86
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain five dollars per month, just half wages, the captain agreeing
“Good deal don’t describe it! It’s worse than a mill-race.” not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contempt of
“Isn’t it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the all the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not middle?”
more than a day out of New Orleans before Stephen discov-
“Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can’t be too careful with a ered that the captain was boasting of his exploit, and that all steamboat. It’s pretty safe out here; can’t strike any bottom the officers had been told. Stephen winced, but said noth-here, you can depend on that.”
ing. About the middle of the afternoon the captain stepped The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At