Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?’
Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W—- came in to take the watch,
and he said–
‘Bixby, you’ll have to look out for President’s Island and all
that country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens.
The banks are caving and the shape of the shores changing
like everything. Why, you wouldn’t know the point above 40.
You can go up inside the old sycamore-snag, now.
So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing shape.
My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparent
to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more than
any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn
it all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours.
That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient river
custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed.
While the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar,
his partner, the retiring pilot, would say something like this–
‘I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale’s Point;
had quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain
‘Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip.
Meet any boats?’
‘Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,
and I couldn’t make her out entirely. I took her for the “Sunny South”–
hadn’t any skylights forward of the chimneys.’
And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his
partner
and say we were abreast of such-and-such a man’s wood-yard
or plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity.
But Mr. W—- came on watch full twelve minutes late on
this particular night,–a tremendous breach of etiquette;
in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots.
So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered
the wheel and marched out of the pilot-house without a word.
I was appalled; it was a villainous night for blackness,
we were in a particularly wide and blind part of the river,
where there was no shape or substance to anything, and it
seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that poor
fellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was.
But I resolved that I would stand by him any way.
He should find that he was not wholly friendless.
So I stood around, and waited to be asked where we were.
But Mr. W—- plunged on serenely through the solid firmament of black
cats that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth.
Here is a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan that
would rather send us all to destruction than put himself under
obligations to me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth
and privileged to snub captains and lord it over everything dead
and alive in a steamboat. I presently climbed up on the bench;
I did not think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunatic
was on watch.
However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time,
because the next thing I was aware of was the fact that day
was breaking, Mr. W—- gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again.
So it was four o’clock and all well–but me; I felt like a skinful
of dry bones and all of them trying to ache at once.
Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed
that it was to do Mr. W—- a benevolence,–tell him where he was.
It took five minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thing