第14章 I Want to be a Cub-pilot(1)

MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death,and I found myself without an ambition.But I was ashamed to go home.

I was in Cincinnati,and I set to work to map out a new career.

I had been reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an expedition sent out by our government.It was said that the expedition,owing to difficulties,had not thoroughly explored a part of the country lying about the head-waters,some four thousand miles from the mouth of the river.It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to New Orleans,where I could doubtless get a ship.

I had thirty dollars left;I would go and complete the exploration of the Amazon.This was all the thought I gave to the subject.

I never was great in matters of detail.I packed my valise,and took passage on an ancient tub called the 'Paul Jones,'for New Orleans.

For the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her'main saloon principally to myself,for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser travelers.

When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio,I became a new being,and the subject of my own admiration.

I was a traveler!A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before.

I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since.

I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me,and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.

Still,when we stopped at villages and wood-yards,I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of the boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the bank.If they did not seem to discover me,I presently sneezed to attract their attention,or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me.

And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched,and gave other signs of being mightily bored with traveling.

I kept my hat off all the time,and stayed where the wind and the sun could strike me,because I wanted to get the bronzed and weather-beaten look of an old traveler.

Before the second day was half gone I experienced a joy which filled me with the purest gratitude;for I saw that the skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck.

I wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now.

We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it.

We stuck hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river,and lay there four days.I was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being a part of the boat's family,a sort of infant son to the captain and younger brother to the officers.

There is no estimating the pride I took in this grandeur,or the affection that began to swell and grow in me for those people.I could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort of presumption in a mere landsman.

I particularly longed to acquire the least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate,and I was on the alert for an opportunity to do him a service to that end.It came at last.

The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the forecastle,and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for somebody to bring him a capstan bar.

I sprang to his side and said:'Tell me where it is--I'll fetch it!'

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor of Russia,the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate was.

He even stopped swearing.He stood and stared down at me.

It took him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again.

Then he said impressively:'Well,if this don't beat hell!'and turned to his work with the air of a man who had been confronted with a problem too abstruse for solution.

I crept away,and courted solitude for the rest of the day.