It was a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted.
The old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to
running away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one.
The perplexed pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely
unnecessary wish that they might never get out of that place.
As always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was answered,
and the others neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is still
butting around in that deserted river, trying to find her way out.
More than one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly,
dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten river
as he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glow
of the specter steamer’s lights drifting through the distant gloom,
and heard the muffled cough of her ‘scape-pipes and the plaintive cry
of her leadsmen.
In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter
with one more reminiscence of ‘Stephen.’
Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen’s note for
borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward.
Stephen never paid one of these notes, but he was very prompt
and very zealous about renewing them every twelve months.
Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could
no longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was
obliged to lie in wait for new men who did not know him.
Such a victim was good-hearted, simple natured young Yates
(I use a fictitious name, but the real name began, as this
one does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot,
got a berth, and when the month was ended and he stepped
up to the clerk’s office and received his two hundred
and fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there!
His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little while
Yates’s two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.
The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement
and satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous.
But innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen’s promise
to pay promptly at the end of the week was a worthless one.
Yates called for his money at the stipulated time;
Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He called then,
according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again,
but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on.
Yates haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last
gave it up. And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates!
Wherever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen.
And not only there, but beaming with affection and gushing
with apologies for not being able to pay. By and by,
whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and fly,
and drag his company with him, if he had company; but it
was of no use; his debtor would run him down and corner him.
Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched hands
and eager eyes, invade the conversation, shake both of Yates’s
arms loose in their sockets, and begin–
‘My, what a race I’ve had! I saw you didn’t see me,
and so I clapped on all steam for fear I’d miss you entirely.
And here you are! there, just stand so, and let me
look at you! just the same old noble countenance.’
[To Yates’s friend:] ‘Just look at him! LOOK at him!
Ain’t it just GOOD to look at him! AIN’T it now? Ain’t he just
a picture! SOME call him a picture; I call him a panorama!
That’s what he is–an entire panorama. And now I’m reminded!
How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier!
For twenty-four hours I’ve been saving up that two hundred
and fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere.
I waited at the Planter’s from six yesterday evening till two o’clock
this morning, without rest or food; my wife says, “Where have you
been all night?” I said, “This debt lies heavy on my mind.”
She says, “In all my days I never saw a man take a debt to heart