hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake.
Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding,
especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night.
But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it.
A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long,
with one end turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench,
with one of the supports left and the other removed.
It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef by a
rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it.
But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench,
the current would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper
lantern with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy,
and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmering spark in
the waste of blackness.
Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.
There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger;
it is so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer
a swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boat
when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars;
it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; there is
music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer,
to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the world
of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub,
to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will simply say,
‘Let her go about!’ and leave the rest to the cub, who instantly cries,
in his sternest tone of command, ‘Ease starboard! Strong on the larboard!
Starboard give way! With a will, men!’ The cub enjoys sounding
for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching all
the yawl’s movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight;
and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastened
upon the yawl’s lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims away
in the remote distance.
One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house
with her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love
with her. So did Mr. Thornburg’s cub, Tom G—-. Tom and I had been
bosom friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise.
I told the girl a good many of my river adventures, and made
myself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear
to be a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he always
had a way of embroidering. However, virtue is its own reward,
so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead in the contest.
About this time something happened which promised handsomely for me:
the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head of 21.
This would occur about nine or ten o’clock at night, when the
passengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg’s watch,
therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect
love of a sounding-boat–long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as
a greyhound; her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen;
one of the mates was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew,
for ours was a steamer where no end of ‘style’ was put on.
We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night,
and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman’s uneducated
eyes could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom.
The passengers were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory.
As I hurried through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten up
in storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not forbear delivering
myself of a mean speech–
‘Ain’t you glad YOU don’t have to go out sounding?’
Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said–