I stood before him. He looked at me some little time, then said–
‘So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?’
I answered meekly–
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know that that is a very serious matter?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully
five minutes with no one at the wheel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you strike him first?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What with?’
‘A stool, sir.’
‘Hard?’
‘Middling, sir.’
‘Did it knock him down?’
‘He–he fell, sir.’
‘Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Pounded him, sir.’
‘Pounded him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you pound him much?–that is, severely?’
‘One might call it that, sir, maybe.’
‘I’m deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that.
You have been guilty of a great crime; and don’t you ever be
guilty of it again, on this boat. BUT–lay for him ashore!
Give him a good sound thrashing, do you hear? I’ll pay the expenses.
Now go–and mind you, not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!–
you’ve been guilty of a great crime, you whelp!’
I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty deliverance;
and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat thighs after I had
closed his door.
When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain,
who was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck,
and demanded that I be put ashore in New Orleans–and added–
‘I’ll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.’
The captain said–
‘But he needn’t come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.
‘I won’t even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has
got to go ashore.’
‘Very well,’ said the captain, ‘let it be yourself;’
and resumed his talk with the passengers.
During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave feels;
for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings,
I listened to George Ealer’s flute; or to his readings from his two bibles,
that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him–
and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move
and ran the game out differently.
Chapter 20
A Catastrophe
WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed
in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand
a daylight watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer.
But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself,
and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head of
some chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other.
Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel with me.
So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the ‘A. T. Lacey,’
for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a new
pilot there and my steersman’s berth could then be resumed.
The ‘Lacey’ was to leave a couple of days after the ‘Pennsylvania.’
The night before the ‘Pennsylvania’ left, Henry and I sat
chatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight.
The subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think we
had not exploited before–steamboat disasters. One was then
on its way to us, little as we suspected it; the water which
was to make the steam which should cause it, was washing past
some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;–
but it would arrive at the right time and the right place.
We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were of much
use in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they might
be of SOME use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fell
within our experience we would at least stick to the boat,
and give such minor service as chance might throw in the way.
Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came,
and acted accordingly.
The ‘Lacey’ started up the river two days behind the ‘Pennsylvania.’