第18章 A Cub-pilot's Experience(3)

That was a dismal revelation to me;for my memory was never loaded with anything but blank cartridges.However,I did not feel discouraged long.I judged that it was best to make some allowances,for doubtless Mr.Bixby was 'stretching.'

Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell.

The stars were all gone now,and the night was as black as ink.

I could hear the wheels churn along the bank,but I was not entirely certain that I could see the shore.The voice of the invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck--'What's this,sir?'

'Jones's plantation.'

I said to myself,I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it isn't.But I did not chirp.I only waited to see.

Mr.Bixby handled the engine bells,and in due time the boat's nose came to the land,a torch glowed from the forecastle,a man skipped ashore,a darky's voice on the bank said,'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag,Mars'Jones,'and the next moment we were standing up the river again,all serene.I reflected deeply awhile,and then said--but not aloud--'Well,the finding of that plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened;but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years.'And I fully believed it was an accident,too.

By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river,I had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman,in daylight,and before we reached St.Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-work,but only a trifle.

I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the names of towns,'points,'bars,islands,bends,reaches,etc.;but the information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my head.

It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river set down;for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on,day and night,there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had slept since the voyage began.

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat,and I packed my satchel and went with him.She was a grand affair.When I stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed perched on a mountain;and her decks stretched so far away,fore and aft,below me,that I wondered how I could ever have considered the little 'Paul Jones'a large craft.There were other differences,too.The 'Paul Jones's'pilot-house was a cheap,dingy,battered rattle-trap,cramped for room:but here was a sumptuous glass temple;room enough to have a dance in;showy red and gold window-curtains;an imposing sofa;leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit,to spin yarns and 'look at the river;'bright,fanciful 'cuspadores'instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust;nice new oil-cloth on the floor;a hospitable big stove for winter;a wheel as high as my head,costly with inlaid work;a wire tiller-rope;bright brass knobs for the bells;and a tidy,white-aproned,black 'texas-tender,'to bring up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch,day and night.

Now this was 'something like,'and so I began to take heart once more to believe that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all.

The moment we were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself with joy.She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room;when I looked down her long,gilded saloon,it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel;she had an oil-picture,by some gifted sign-painter,on every stateroom door;she glittered with no end of prism-fringed chandeliers;the clerk's office was elegant,the bar was marvelous,and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.

The boiler deck (i.e.the second story of the boat,so to speak)was as spacious as a church,it seemed to me;so with the forecastle;and there was no pitiful handful of deckhands,firemen,and roustabouts down there,but a whole battalion of men.The fires were fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces,and over them were eight huge boilers!

This was unutterable pomp.The mighty engines--but enough of this.

I had never felt so fine before.And when I found that the regiment of natty servants respectfully 'sir'd'me,my satisfaction was complete.