Well, those are little reefs; you want to just miss the ends
of them, but run them pretty close. Now look out–look out!
Don’t you crowd that slick, greasy-looking place; there ain’t
nine feet there; she won’t stand it. She begins to smell it;
look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you go!
Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back!
Set her back!
The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly,
shooting white columns of steam far aloft out of the ‘scape pipes,
but it was too late. The boat had ‘smelt’ the bar in good earnest;
the foamy ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared,
a great dead swell came rolling forward and swept ahead of her,
she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing away
toward the other shore as if she were about scared to death.
We were a good mile from where we ought to have been, when we
finally got the upper hand of her again.
During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I
knew how to run the next few miles. I said–
‘Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one,
start out from the lower end of Higgins’s wood-yard, make
a square crossing and—-‘
‘That’s all right. I’ll be back before you close up on the next point.’
But he wasn’t. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon
a piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not know
that he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform.
I went gaily along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had never
left the boat in my sole charge such a length of time before.
I even got to ‘setting’ her and letting the wheel go, entirely, while I
vaingloriously turned my back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune,
a sort of easy indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby
and other great pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced
to the front again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn’t
clapped my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightful
bluff reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows!
My head was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on;
I gasped and could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with such
rapidity that it wove itself together like a spider’s web; the boat
answered and turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her!
I fled, and still it followed, still it kept–right across my bows!
I never looked to see where I was going, I only fled.
The awful crash was imminent–why didn’t that villain come!
If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I might get thrown overboard.
But better that than kill the boat. So in blind desperation I started
such a rattling ‘shivaree’ down below as never had astounded an engineer
in this world before, I fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the engines
began to back and fill in a furious way, and my reason forsook its throne–
we were about to crash into the woods on the other side of the river.
Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view on the hurricane deck.
My soul went out to him in gratitude. My distress vanished; I would have
felt safe on the brink of Niagara, with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck.
He blandly and sweetly took his tooth-pick out of his mouth between
his fingers, as if it were a cigar–we were just in the act of climbing
an overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern like rats–
and lifted up these commands to me ever so gently–
‘Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.’
The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs
a critical instant, then reluctantly began to back away.
‘Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard.
Come ahead on it. Point her for the bar.’
I sailed away as serenely as a summer’s morning Mr. Bixby came in and said,