the captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness
in his voice–
‘Where is Mr. Bixby?’
‘Gone below, sir.’
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to construct
dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep
the run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead!
The wave of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating
every joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished.
I seized the bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again;
dropped it once more; clutched it tremblingly one again,
and pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear the stroke myself.
Captain and mate sang out instantly, and both together–
‘Starboard lead there! and quick about it!’
This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel;
but I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new
dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find
perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.
Then came the leadsman’s sepulchral cry–
‘D-e-e-p four!’
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath away.
‘M-a-r-k three!… M-a-r-k three… Quarter less three!…
Half twain!’
This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.
‘Quarter twain! Quarter twain! MARK twain!’
I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do.
I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on
my eyes, they stuck out so far.
‘Quarter LESS twain! Nine and a HALF!’
We were DRAWING nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter.
I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the
speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer–
‘Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal
SOUL out of her! ‘
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood
Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on
the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter.
I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man in
human history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks,
came ahead on the engines, and said–
‘It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN’T it?
I suppose I’ll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave
the lead at the head of 66.’
‘Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t;
for I want you to learn something by that experience.
Didn’t you KNOW there was no bottom in that crossing?’
‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody else
to shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that.
And another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don’t turn coward.
That isn’t going to help matters any.’
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned.
Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had
to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.
It was, ‘Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!’
Chapter 14
Rank and Dignity of Piloting
IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae
of the science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step
to a comprehension of what the science consists of; and at
the same time I have tried to show him that it is a very curious
and wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his attention.
If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no surprising thing,
for I loved the profession far better than any I have followed since,
and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is plain:
a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and
entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.
Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament and people;
parliaments sit in chains forged by their constituency;
the editor of a newspaper cannot be independent, but must