on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we 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.
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be
likely to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years;
and the other was that the nine or ten dollars still left
in my pocket would not suffice for so imposing an exploration
as 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 siege
against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he surrendered.
He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New Orleans
to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small
enterprise of ‘learning’ twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi 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 supposed
that 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 other
boats 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 into
the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the 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 better
than 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 intervening
between the ‘Paul Jones’ and the ships; and within ten seconds
more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was going into
danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with
which my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed
the ships so closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent.
When he had cooled a little he told me that the easy water
was close ashore and the current outside, and therefore we must
hug the bank, up-stream, to get the benefit of the former,
and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage of the latter.
In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and leave
the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things.
Said he, ‘This is Six-Mile Point.’ I assented. It was pleasant
enough information, but I could not see the bearing of it.
I was not conscious that it was a matter of any interest to me.
Another time he said, ‘This is Nine-Mile Point.’
Later he said, ‘This is Twelve-Mile Point.’ They were
all about level with the water’s edge; they all looked
about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque.
I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But no; he would
crowd up around a point, hugging the shore with affection,
and then say: ‘The slack water ends here, abreast this bunch
of China-trees; now we cross over.’ So he crossed over.
He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck.
I either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation,