CHAPTER 13

A Pilot's Needs

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make

plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the

peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there

is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has

brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.

That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is

so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'

sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if

he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the

vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing

it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river and

know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street

in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently

until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and

little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly

name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in

that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a

tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge

who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will

go on until you know every street crossing, the character, size, and

position of the crossing-stones, and the varying depth of mud in each of

those numberless places, you will have some idea of what the pilot must

know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out of trouble. Next, if

you will take half of the signs in that long street, and _change their

places_ once a month, and still manage to know their new positions

accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these repeated changes

without making any mistakes, you will understand what is required of a

pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.

I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world.

To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them

glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book

and recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant

mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's

massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the

handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am

not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too

strong, but pilots will not.

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how

placidly effortless is its way; how _unconsciously _it lays up its vast

stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single

valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry,

'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until

it become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be

going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking,

and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst

of this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be

interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again,

just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with

precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain

was uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and

side-marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat

there and put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter

twain' did not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained

faculties instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of

depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without

requiring any assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking

and talking with a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a

monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and

then in the midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A,

etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or

three weeks afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell

what objects you were passing at the moment it was done. But you could

if your memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that

sort of thing mechanically.

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting will

develop it into a very colossus of capability. But _only in the matters

it is daily drilled in_. A time would come when the man's faculties

could not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could

not help holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked

that same man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten

chances to one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be

done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one

particular line of business.

At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,

Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles of that

stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he had seen

each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was

so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few

trips later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and

night--and he ranked A 1, too.

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats

of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was born in

him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name.

Instantly Mr. Brown would break in--

'Oh, I knew _him_. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a little scar

on the side of his throat, like a splinter under the flesh. He was only

in the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. I made a

trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then; the “Henry

Blake” grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the

“George Elliott” unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the “Sunflower”--'

'Why, the “Sunflower” didn't sink until--'

'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of

December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first

clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these

things a week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the

“Sunflower.” Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of

the next year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died

two years after 3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the

Hardys,--they were Alleghany River men,--but people who knew them told

me all these things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter

and summer just the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she

was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It

was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton

before she was married.'

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could _not _forget

any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial details remained

as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain there for

years, as the most memorable events. His was not simply a pilot's

memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking about a trifling

letter he had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver

you the entire screed from memory. And then without observing that he

was departing from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely

to hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that

letter; and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's

relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too.

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences

are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting

circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog

his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an insufferable

bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little

grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. Mr. Brown

would start out with the honest intention of telling you a vastly funny

anecdote about a dog. He would be 'so full of laugh' that he could

hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog's breed and

personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner; of his owner's

family, with descriptions of weddings and burials that had occurred in

it, together with recitals of congratulatory verses and obituary poetry

provoked by the same: then this memory would recollect that one of these

events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter' of such and such a

year, and a minute description of that winter would follow, along with

the names of people who were frozen to death, and statistics showing the

high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork and hay would suggest

corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses; cows and

horses would suggest the circus and certain celebrated bare-back riders;

the transition from the circus to the menagerie was easy and natural;

from the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step; then of course

the heathen savages would suggest religion; and at the end of three or

four hours' tedious jaw, the watch would change, and Brown would go out

of the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons he had heard years

before about the efficacy of prayer as a means of grace. And the

original first mention would be all you had learned about that dog,

after all this waiting and hungering.

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities which he

must also have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a

cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give a man the merest trifle

of pluck to start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he cannot

be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but one cannot quite

say the same for judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man

must _start _with a good stock of that article or he will never succeed

as a pilot.

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it

does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after

the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,' alone and under

the staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the

position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted

with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his

steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is

_his _courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out

and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man's.

He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo

altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment;

he is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his

knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a

sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these

cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little

more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon

the candidate.

Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I

used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become a good

steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,

night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did

was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad

crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of

leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river

was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any

crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction,

I should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any

crossing in the lot, in the _day-time_, was a thing too preposterous for

contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the

bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as

high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said--

'I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?'

This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest

crossing in the whole river. One couldn't come to any harm, whether he

ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom

there. I knew all this, perfectly well.

'Know how to _run _it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.'

'How much water is there in it?'

'Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get bottom there with a

church steeple.'

'You think so, do you?'

The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr.

Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything more. I began to

imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent

somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the

leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers,

and then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could

observe results. Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane

deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a

straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of

the island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my

nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across, 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!'