produced 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 through
a 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 bringing
the boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting orders
from the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped
the wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased.
It was evening–dim twilight–the captain’s hat was perched upon
the big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain
was 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 closer
and closer–the crash was bound to come very soon–and still that hat
never 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 time
to see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walking
into 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 through
that 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 not
hesitate to act in the same way again in like circumstances.
One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river
had 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 clothing
in 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 this
sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a like fate
which came within a second or two of being fatally too late; BUT THERE
IS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE WHILE BY
REMAINING 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 to
put it in italics, too.
The ‘cub’ pilot is early admonished to despise all perils
connected with a pilot’s calling, and to prefer any sort
of death to the deep dishonor of deserting his post
while 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 upon
to stick to the wheel, and die there when occasion requires.
In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow who perished
at the wheel a great many years ago, in White River, to save
the lives of other men. He said to the captain that if the fire
would give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance away,
all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bank
of 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 became
a pilot to reply–
‘I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay,