CHAPTER 9

Continued Perplexities

THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptly put

such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the

countless crossing-marks began to stay with me. But the result was just

the same. I never could more than get one knotty thing learned before

another presented itself. Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the

water and pretending to read it as if it were a book; but it was a

book that told me nothing. A time came at last, however, when Mr.

Bixby seemed to think me far enough advanced to bear a lesson on

water-reading. So he began--

'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water? Now,

that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-bar

under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.

There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.

If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out. Do you see

where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to fade away?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef. You can climb

over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over, now, and follow along

close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.'

I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end. Then Mr.

Bixby said--

'Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won't want to mount the

reef; a boat hates shoal water. Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in

hand. NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!'

He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it around until

it was hard down, and then we held it so. The boat resisted, and refused

to answer for a while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted

the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming away from her

bows.

'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When

she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort

of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night

that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little,

toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under

every point, because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy

and allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lines on the face

of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan. Well, those are

little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, but run them

pretty close. Now look out--look out! Don't you crowd that slick,

greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feet there; she won't stand it.

She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you go!

Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back! Set her back!

The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly, shooting

white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes, but it was

too late. The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges

that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared, a great dead swell

came rolling forward and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to

larboard, and went tearing away toward the other shore as if she were

about scared to death. We were a good mile from where we ought to have

been, when we finally got the upper hand of her again.

During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I knew

how to run the next few miles. I said--

'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one, start

out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, make a square crossing

and--'

'That's all right. I'll be back before you close up on the next point.'

But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon a

piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not know that

he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform. I went gaily

along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had never left the boat in

my sole charge such a length of time before. I even got to 'setting'

her and letting the wheel go, entirely, while I vaingloriously turned

my back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy

indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great

pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the front

again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn't clapped

my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightful bluff

reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows! My head

was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on; I gasped and

could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that

it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat answered and

turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her! I fled, and

still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows! I never looked

to see where I was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent--why

didn't that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a bell,

I might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the boat. So

in blind desperation I started such a rattling 'shivaree' down below as

never had astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy. Amidst

the frenzy of the bells the engines began to back and fill in a furious

way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the

woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly

into view on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude.

My distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara,

with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and sweetly took

his tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were a

cigar--we were just in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree,

and the passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these

commands to me ever so gently--

'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.'

The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical

instant, then reluctantly began to back away.

'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard. Come ahead on

it. Point her for the bar.'

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning. Mr. Bixby came in and

said, with mock simplicity--

'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times

before you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'

I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.

'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watch will tell

you when he wants to wood up.'

I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.

'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then? Did you

ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the

river?'

'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting away from a

bluff reef.'

'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where

you were.'

'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.'

'Just about. Run over it!'

'Do you give it as an order?'

'Yes. Run over it.'

'If I don't, I wish I may die.'

'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just as anxious to

kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before. I impressed my

orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a straight

break for the reef. As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath;

but we slid over it like oil.

'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a _wind _reef.

The wind does that.'

'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever going to

tell them apart?'

'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just naturally

_know _one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or

how you know them apart'

It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became a

wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated

passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its

most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.

And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new

story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there

was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could

leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,

thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There

never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest

was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every

reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a

peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions

when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an

_italicized _passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of

the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at

the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that

could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is

the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most

hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read

this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by

the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these

were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of

reading-matter.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know

every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I

knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.

But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be

restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had

gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful

sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad

expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red

hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating,

black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling

upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling

rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was

faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and

radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was

densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was

broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver;

and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single

leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that

was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images,

woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near,

the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing

moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The

world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.

But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the

glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight

wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether

to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should

have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it,

inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have

wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small

thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef

which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if

it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a

dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in

the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is

shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest

is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very

best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead

tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and

then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night

without the friendly old landmark.

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the

value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it

could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since

those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely

flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples

above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick

with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever

see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and

comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he

sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his

trade?