CHAPTER 7

A Daring Deed

WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.

Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could

make neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was turned around.

I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see

how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was

plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river _both ways_.

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'

What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St.

Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi

changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find

it necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats

were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.

A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who

seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their

being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes

of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's

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. Mr. Bixby said--

'We will lay up here all night, captain.'

'Very well, sir.'

That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night. It

seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased, without

asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and

went immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and

experiences. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of

meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had

looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but

no, it reveled all through my head till sunrise again, a frantic and

tireless nightmare.

Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming

along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of

the river' (as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should

overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently

grounded the boat, and we lost so much time in getting her off that

it was plain that darkness would overtake us a good long way above

the mouth. This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of our

visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for their return, no

matter how long that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good

deal. Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind

of darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was

different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current pushing

behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at night in low

water.

There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get through

the intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we could

venture the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.

But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night. So there was

a deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day, and a constant

ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal

subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we were delayed in a

bad crossing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the

burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me,

and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such

an awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five

minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over

again. We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ran such

portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream, because of

his greater familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot house

constantly.

An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped

aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand

and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a

doomful sigh--

'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.' All the watches

closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered something about its

being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour

sooner!' and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.

Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The

sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed

from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob

and had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the

knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were

exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly

the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or

two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became

oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from

the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause, and one more note

was struck. The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck--

'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!'

The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were

gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.

'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three!... Quarter-less three!... Half

twain!... Quarter twain!... M-a-r-k twain!... Quarter-less--'

Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far

below in the engine room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to

whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on--and

it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was

watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was

calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on

a spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible

marks--for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he

would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk,

one caught a coherent sentence now and then--such as--

'There; she's over the first reef all right!'

After a pause, another subdued voice--

'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'

'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'

Somebody else muttered--

'Oh, it was done beautiful--_beautiful_!'

Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the

current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the stars

being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work; it

held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than

that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island. We were closing

right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so imminent

seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the strongest

impulse to do _something_, anything, to save the vessel. But still Mr.

Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the pilots

stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.

'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered.

The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries, till it was

down to--

'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!....

Seven-and--'

Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer--

'Stand by, now!'

'Aye-aye, sir!'

'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and--'

We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,

shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've

got!' then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!'

The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apex

of disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went! And

such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a

pilot-house before!

There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night;

and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talked

about by river men.

Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying the great

steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should know that

not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind

reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush

the overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass

almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would

snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and

destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boat and cargo

in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the

bargain.

The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby,

uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said--

'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!'