sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of them
constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever
really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)
it was cheaper to ‘look at the river’ than stay ashore and pay board.
In time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested
boats that had an established reputation for setting good tables.
All visiting pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing,
winter or summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy
the channel or assist the boat’s pilots in any way they could.
They were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers,
when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river they
are always understood and are always interesting. Your true pilot
cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride
in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.
We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip.
There were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our
great pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate
shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.
They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity
proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots.
The others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall
felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.
I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say torpid.
I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel when it
was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest that stood
nearest did that when occasion required–and this was pretty much all
the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the scant water.
I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the hope all out of me.
One visitor said to another–
‘Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?’
‘It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys
on the “Diana” told me; started out about fifty yards above
the wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabin
under Plum Point till I raised the reef–quarter less twain–
then straightened up for the middle bar till I got well abreast
the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then got my stern
on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the point,
and came through a-booming–nine and a half.’
‘Pretty square crossing, an’t it?’
‘Yes, but the upper bar ‘s working down fast.’
Another pilot spoke up and said–
‘I had better water than that, and ran it lower down;
started out from the false point–mark twain–raised the second
reef abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less twain.’
One of the gorgeous ones remarked–
‘I don’t want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that’s a good deal
of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.’
There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on
the boaster and ‘settled’ him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking.
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, ‘Now if my ears
hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and islands
and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm personal
acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscure
wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles;
and more than that, I must actually know where these things are in the dark,
unless these guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through two miles
of solid blackness; I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I had
never thought of it.’
At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal
to land), and the captain emerged from his drawing-room
in the forward end of the texas, and looked up inquiringly.