I considered this an outrage. I said–
‘Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through
that tangled place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch.
How do you reckon I can remember such a mess as that?’
‘My boy, you’ve got to remember it. You’ve got to remember
the exact spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had
the shoalest water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal places
between St. Louis and New Orleans; and you mustn’t get the shoal
soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the shoal soundings
and marks of another, either, for they’re not often twice alike.
You must keep them separate.’
When I came to myself again, I said–
‘When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead,
and then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living.
I want to retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush;
I’m only fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot;
and if I had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around,
unless I went on crutches.’
‘Now drop that! When I say I’ll learn
And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.’
Chapter 9
Continued Perplexities
THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptly
put such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal
water and the countless crossing-marks began to stay with me.
But the result was just the same. I never could more than get
one knotty thing learned before another presented itself.
Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to read
it as if it were a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.
A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby seemed to think me far
enough advanced to bear a lesson on water-reading. So he began–
‘Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water? Now,
that’s a reef. Moreover, it’s a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-bar
under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.
There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.
If you were to hit it you would knock the boat’s brains out.
Do you see where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to
fade away?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef.
You can climb over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over,
now, and follow along close under the reef–easy water there–
not much current.’
I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end.
Then Mr. Bixby said–
‘Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won’t want to mount the reef;
a boat hates shoal water. Stand by–wait–WAIT–keep her well in hand.
NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!’
He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin
it around until it was hard down, and then we held it so.
The boat resisted, and refused to answer for a while, and next she
came surging to starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long,
angry ridge of water foaming away from her bows.
‘Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she’ll get away from you.
When she fights strong and the tiller slips a little,
in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let up on her a trifle;
it is the way she tells you at night that the water is too shoal;
but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the point.
You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under every point,
because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy
and allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lines
on the face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan.