The
great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at
>>
## p.
great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at
>>
## p.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v07 - Cic to Cuv
The
book is a story which details some passages in the life of an
ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of
my time out West there. He has run away from his persecut-
ing father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to
make a nice truth-telling respectable boy of him; and with him
a slave of the widow's has also escaped. They have found at
fragment of a lumber raft (it is high water and dead summer-
time), and are floating down the river by night and hiding in
the willows by day,-bound for Cairo,- whence the negro will
seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a fog, they
## p. 3790 (#152) ###########################################
3790
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
pass Cairo without knowing it. By-and-by they begin to sus-
pect the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal
suspense by swimming down to a huge raft which they have
seen in the distance ahead of them, creeping aboard under cover
of the darkness, and gathering the needed information by eaves-
dropping:-
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he
is impatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by-and-
by Jim said it was such a black night now that it wouldn't be
no risk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and
listen, they would talk about Cairo, because they would be cal-
culating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they
would send boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or some-
thing. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could
'most always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river,
and struck out for the raft's light. By-and-by, when I got down
nearly to her, I eased up and went slow and cautious. But
everything was all right-nobody at the sweeps. So I swum
down along the raft till I was 'most abreast the camp fire in the
middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got in
amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the
fire. There was thirteen men there - they was the watch on
deck, of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot too. They
had a jug, and tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. One
man was singing-roaring, you may say; and it wasn't a nice
song for a parlor anyway. He roared through his nose, and
strung out the last word of every line very long. When he was
done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung. It begun:-
―
―
"There was a woman in our towdn,
In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell),
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wedl.
"Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,
Ri-loo, riloo, rilay - - - e,
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'1. "
And so on
―
- fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he
was going to start on the next verse one of them said it was
## p. 3791 (#153) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3791
the tune the old cow died on; and another one said, "Oh, give
us a rest. " And another one told him to take a walk. They
made fun of him till he got mad and jumped up and begun to
cuss the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest
man there jumped up and says:-
"Set whar you are, gentlemen.
Leave him to me; he's my
meat.
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his
heels together every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that
was all hung with fringes, and says, "You lay thar tell the
chawin-up's done;" and flung his hat down, which was all over
ribbons, and says, "You lay thar tell his sufferins is over. "
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together
again and shouted out:-
―――――
-
Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,
copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! - Look
at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Deso-
lation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-
brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the
mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a
bar' of whisky for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a
bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I
split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the
thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me
room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and
the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on
me, gentlemen! - and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm
'bout to turn myself loose! "
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head
and looking fierce and kind of swelling around in a little circle,
tucking up his wrist-bands and now and then straightening up
and beating his breast with his fist, saying "Look at me, gen-
tlemen! " When he got through he jumped up and cracked his
heels together three times, and let off a roaring "Whoo-oop!
I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives! "
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch
hat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward,
with his back sagged and his south end sticking out far, and his
fists a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went
around in a little circle about three times, swelling himself up
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3792
and breathing hard. Then he straightened, and jumped up and
cracked his heels together three times before he lit again (that
made them cheer), and he begun to shout like this:-
"Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of
sorrow's a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my
powers a-working! whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin; don't let me
get a start! Smoked glass, here, for all! Don't attempt to look
at me with the naked eye, gentlemen! When I'm playful I use
the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine,
and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head
with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!
When I'm cold I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when
I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty
I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range
the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow
your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun's face and
make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and
hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains!
Contemplate me through leather- don't use the naked eye! I'm
the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massa-
cre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments,
the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!
The boundless vastness of the great American desert is my
inclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises! "
He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before
he lit (they cheered him again), and as he came down he shouted
out: "Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! "
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing
again the first one the one they called Bob; next, the Child
of Calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both
got at it at the same time, swelling round and round each other
and punching their fists 'most into each other's faces, and whoop-
ing and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names,
and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob called
him a heap rougher names, and the Child come back at him with
the very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's
hat off, and the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat
about six foot; Bob went and got it and said never mind, this
warn't going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man
that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better look
--
-
―
## p. 3793 (#155) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3793
out; for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a
living man, that he would have to answer to him with the best
blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than
he was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warn-
ing, now, never to cross his path again, for he could never rest
till he had waded in his blood; for such was his nature, though
he was sparing him now on account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growl-
ing and shaking their heads and going on about what they was
going to do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and
says:
"Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and
I'll thrash the two of ye! "
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this
way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawl-
ing faster than they could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes.
till they begged like dogs-and how the other lot did yell and
laugh and clap their hands all the way through, and shout "Sail
in, Corpse-Maker! " "Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity! "
"Bully for you, little Davy! " Well, it was a perfect pow-wow
for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes
when they got through. Little Davy made them own up that
they was sneaks and cowards, and not fit to eat with a dog or
drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook hands with
each other very solemn, and said they had always respected
each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones. So then
they washed their faces in the river; and just then there was a
loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to han-
dle the after-sweeps.
VII-238
## p. 3794 (#156) ###########################################
3794
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
A STEAMBOAT LANDING AT A SMALL TOWN
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
―――――
Ο
NCE a day a cheap gaudy packet arrived upward from St.
Louis, and another downward from Keokuk, Before these
events, the day was glorious with expectancy; after them,
the day was a dead and empty thing. Not only the boys but
the whole village felt this. After all these years I can picture
that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town
drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets
empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of
the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted
back against the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their
faces, asleep with shingle-shavings enough around to show
what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along
the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and
seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the
"levee "; a pile of "skids" on the slope of the stone-paved
wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of
them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but no-
body to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against
them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Missis-
sippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the
dense forest away on the other side; the "point" above the
town and the "point" below, bounding the river-glimpse and
turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant
and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears above
one of those remote "points"; instantly a negro drayman, fa-
mous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry,
"S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'! " and the scene changes! The town
drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays
follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution,
and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving.
Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to
a common centre, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten
their eyes upon the coming boat, as upon a wonder they are see-
ing for the first time. And the boat is rather a handsome sight
She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two
tall fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind
too.
## p. 3795 (#157) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3795
swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, all glass and "gin-
gerbread," perched on top of the "texas" deck behind them; the
paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays
above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and
the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white rail-
ings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the fur-
nace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper
decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big
bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the black-
est smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys — a
husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch-pine just before
arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the
broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied
deck hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of
rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the
gauge-cocks; the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels
stop; then they turn back, churning the water to a foam, and
the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as there is to get
aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to dis-
charge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling
and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes
later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-
staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard
asleep by the skids once more.
THE HIGH RIVER: AND A PHANTOM PILOT
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
D
URING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable
nuisance. We were running chute after chute,- a new
world to me, and if there was a particularly cramped
place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn
there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a still
worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal
water. And then there would be no end of profane cordialities
exchanged.
――――
Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our
way cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would sud-
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3796
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
denly be broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in an
instant a log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil,
close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives, but
snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all the
steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a
rock or a solid log raft with a steamboat when he can get ex-
cused.
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always
carried a large assortment of religious tracts with them in those
old departed steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times
a day we would be cramping up around a bar, while a string of
these small-fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the
bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles. Now a skiff
would dart away from one of them, and come fighting its labori-
ous way across the desert of water. It would «< ease all," in the
shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout,
"Gimme a pa-a-per! >>
as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The
clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these
were picked up without comment, you might notice that now a
dozen other skiffs had been drifting down upon us without say-
ing anything. You understand, they had been waiting to see
how No. I was going to fare. No. 1 making no comment, all
the rest would bend to their oars and come on now; and as fast
as they came the clerk would heave over neat bundles of reli-
gious tracts, tied to shingles. The amount of hard swearing which
twelve packages of religious literature will command when im-
partially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have
pulled a heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is
simply incredible.
As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my
vision. By the time the river was over its banks we had for-
saken our old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that
had stood ten feet out of water before; we were shaving stumpy
shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had always
seen avoided before; we were clattering through chutes like that
of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of
timber till our nose was almost at the very spot. Some of these
chutes were utter solitudes. The dense untouched forest over-
hung both banks of the crooked little crack, and one could
believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.
The swinging grapevines, the grassy nooks and vistas, glimpsed
## p. 3797 (#159) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3797
as we swept by, the flowering creepers waving their red blos-
soms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the spendthrift rich-
ness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away there.
The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep, except
at the head; the current was gentle; under the "points" the
water was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that
where the tender willow thickets projected you could bury your
boat's broadside in them as you tore along, and then you seemed
fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms and
wretcheder little log cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking
a foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-
racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top rail,
elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharg-
ing the result at floating chips through crevices left by lost
teeth; while the rest of the family and the few farm animals
were huddled together in an empty wood flat riding at her moor-
ings close at hand. In this flatboat the family would have to
cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days
(or possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet.
and let them get back to their log cabin and their chills again—
chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to en-
able them to take exercise without exertion. And this sort of
watery camping out was a thing which these people were rather
liable to be treated to a couple of times a year: by the Decem-
ber rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise out of the Missis-
sippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at least
enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then,
and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated
the blessing too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide
open and made the most of these occasions. Now what could
these banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the
blues during the low-water season!
Once in one of these lovely island chutes we found our
course completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will
serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were.
The pas-
sengers had an hour's recreation in a virgin wilderness while the
boat hands chopped the bridge away; for there was no such
thing as turning back, you comprehend.
From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its
banks, you have no particular trouble in the night, for the
## p. 3798 (#160) ###########################################
3798
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
thousand-mile wall of dense forest that guards the two banks all
the way is only gapped with a farm or wood-yard opening at
intervals, and so you can't "get out of the river» much easier
than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from Baton Rouge
to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more than
a mile wide, and very deep-as much as two hundred feet, in
places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are
shorn of their timber and bordered by continuous sugar planta-
tions, with only here and there a scattering sapling or row of
ornamental China-trees. The timber is shorn off clear to the
rear of the plantations, from two to four miles. When the first
frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off their crops in a
hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, they form
the refuse of the stalks (which they call bagasse) into great piles
and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the ba-
gasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar-mills. Now
the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's
own kitchen.
An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks
of the Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river,
and this embankment is set back from the edge of the shore
from ten to perhaps a hundred feet, according to circumstances;
say thirty or forty feet as a general thing. Fill that whole
region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred
miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks,
and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how
she will feel. And see how you will feel too! You find your-
self away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless,
that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you
cannot discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always
imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. The plan-
tations themselves are transformed by the smoke and look like a
part of the sea. All through your watch you are tortured with
the exquisite misery of uncertainty. You hope you are keeping
in the river, but you do not know. All that you are sure about
is that you are likely to be within six feet of the bank and de-
struction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore.
And you are sure also that if you chance suddenly to fetch up
against the embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you
will have the small comfort of knowing that it is about what
you were expecting to do. One of the great Vicksburg packets
## p. 3799 (#161) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
379. 9
darted out into a sugar plantation one night, at such a time, and
had to stay there a week. But there was no novelty about it: it
had often been done before.
I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a
curious thing while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in
that it is connected with piloting. There used to be an excel-
lent pilot on the river, a Mr. X. , who was a somnambulist. It
was said that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of
river, he was pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep and
do strange things. He was once fellow pilot for a trip or two
with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger packet.
During a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy,
but got over it by-and-by, as X. seemed content to stay in his
bed when asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching
Helena, Arkansas; the water was low, and the crossing above
the town in a very blind and tangled condition. X. had seen
the crossing since Ealer had, and as the night was particularly
drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering whether he had
not better have X. called to assist in running the place, when
the door opened and X. walked in. Now on very dark nights,
light is a deadly enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you
stand in a lighted room on such a night, you cannot see things
in the street to any purpose; but if you put out the lights and
stand in the gloom you can make out objects in the street pretty
well. So on very dark nights pilots do not smoke; they allow
no fire in the pilot-house stove if there is a crack which can
allow the least ray to escape; they order the furnaces to be
curtained with huge tarpaulins and the skylights to be closely
blinded. Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The
undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X. 's
voice. This said: :-
"Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you
have, and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself
easier than I could tell you how to do it. "
"It is kind of you, and I swear I am willing. I haven't got
another drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning
around and around the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I
can't tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around
like a whirligig. "
So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless.
The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,
## p. 3800 (#162) ###########################################
3800
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stood
at ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as
gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday. When
Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he had not
confessed! He stared and wondered, and finally said: -
"Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that
was another mistake of mine. "
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He
rang for the leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked
the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks, then stood at
the centre of the wheel and peered blandly out into the black-
ness, fore and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled
more and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and the dead.
silence and suspense of "drifting" followed; when the shoalest
water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her hand-
somely over, and then began to work her warily into the next
system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads.
and engines followed, the boat slipped through without touching
bottom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the
crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by
inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water
was cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went
swinging over the reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great relieving
sigh, and said: -
"That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on
the Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done, if I
hadn't seen it. "
There was no reply, and he added:-
"Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run
down and get a cup of coffee. "
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the
"texas," and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the
night watchman happened in, and was about to happen out
again, when he noticed Ealer and exclaimed: -
"Who is at the wheel, sir? "
"X. "
"Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house
companion-way, three steps at a jump! Nobody there!
The
great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at
>>
## p. 3801 (#163) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3801
her own sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again;
Ealer seized the wheel, set the engine back with power, and held
his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a «< tow-
head" which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf
of Mexico!
By-and-by the watchman came back and said:
"Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep when he first
came up here ? »
“No. ”
"Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the
railings, just as unconcerned as
as another man would walk a
pavement; and I put him to bed; now just this minute there
he was again, away astern, going through that sort of tight-
rope deviltry the same as before. "
"Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those
fits. But I hope he'll have them often. You just ought to
have seen him take this boat through Helena crossing. I never
saw anything so gaudy before. And if he can do such gold-
leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound
asleep, what couldn't he do if he was dead! "
AN ENCHANTING RIVER SCENE
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
THE
HE face of the water in time became a wonderful book
a book that was a dead language to the uneducated pas-
senger, 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
sparklingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who
could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dim-
ple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not over-
―
## p. 3802 (#164) ###########################################
3802
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
look 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 kept 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 slant-
ing 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 sombre shadow that fell from this forest was
broken in one place by a long ruffled trail that shone like sil-
ver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree
waved a single leafy bough, that glowed like a flame in the un-
obstructed 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 any-
thing 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
## p. 3803 (#165) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3803
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 chan-
ging 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 pro-
fessionally 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?
THE LIGHTNING PILOT
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
EXT 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 getting her off that it was plain the darkness
## p. 3804 (#166) ###########################################
3804
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
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 sail-
ing 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 cross-
ing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under
the burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communi-
cated 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 reliev-
ing 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 famil-
iarity 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
## p. 3805 (#167) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3805
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.
Quarter-less-
"M-a-r-k three!
•
>>
M-a-r-k three!
three!
Quarter twain!
Half twain!
Quarter-less — "
M-a-r-k twain!
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 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 invisi-
ble 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 im-
pulse to do something, anything, to save the vessel. But still
## p. 3806 (#168) ###########################################
3806
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
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! "
"Ay-ay, 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 tre-
mendous 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.
AN EXPEDITION AGAINST OGRES
From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: copyright 1889, by
Charles L. Webster and Company
Μ
Y EXPEDITION was all the talk that day and that night, and
the boys were very good to me, and made much of me,
and seemed to have forgotten, their vexation and disap-
pointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those
ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were them-
selves that had the contract. Well, they were good children-
but just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of
points about how to scout for giants, and how to scoop them in;
and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and
gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. But it
never occurred to one of them to reflect that if I was such a
wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to
## p. 3807 (#169) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3807
need salves, or instructions, or charms against enchantments, and
least of all arms and armor, on a foray of any kind-even
against fire-spouting dragons and devils hot from perdition, let
alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these common-
place ogres of the back settlements.
I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that
was the usual way; but I had the demon's own time with
my armor, and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome
to get into, and there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer
or two of blanket around your body for a sort of cushion, and
to keep off the cold iron; then you put on your sleeves and
shirt of chain-mail - these are made of small steel links woven
together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss
your shirt on to the floor it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet
fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest
material in the world for a night-shirt, yet plenty used it for
that tax collectors and reformers, and one-horse kings with a
defective title, and those sorts of people; then you put on your
shoes flatboats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel-
and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. Next you buckle
your greaves on your legs and your cuisses on your thighs; then
come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to
feel crowded; then you hitch on to the breastplate the half-
petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down
in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and
isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal-scuttle, either for
looks, or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on
your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints on to your arms,
your iron gauntlets on to your hands, your iron rat-trap on to
your head, with a rag of steel web hitched on to it to hang over
the back of your neck—and there you are, snug as a candle in
a candle-mold. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is
packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking,
there is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by com-
parison with the shell.
-
―
The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as
we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as
not I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip.
How stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. He had
on his head a conical steel casque that only came down to his
ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended
## p. 3808 (#170) ###########################################
3808
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of
him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain-mail, trousers and all.
But pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside gar-
ment, which of course was of chain-mail, as I said, and hung
straight from his shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to
the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he
could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. He was
going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it, too. I would
have given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too late now
to be fooling around. The sun was just up; the king and the
court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it
wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your
horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get disappointed.
They carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the
drug-store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix
your feet in the stirrups; and all the while you do feel so
strange and stuffy and like somebody else-like somebody that
has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or some-
thing like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort
of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up
the mast they called a spear in its socket by my left foot, and I
gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield around my
neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to
sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a
maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. There was
nothing more to do now but for that damsel to get up behind
me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around
me to hold on.
And so we started; and everybody gave us a good-by and
waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met,
going down the hill and through the village, was respectful to us
except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. They said:-
"Oh, what a guy! " and hove clods at us.
In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They
don't respect anything, they don't care for anything or anybody.
They say "Go up, bald-head! " to the prophet going his unoffend-
ing way in the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy
gloom of the Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same
way in Buchanan's administration; I remember, because I was
there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled with
his boys; and I wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it
## p. 3809 (#171) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3809
wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up again. I hate
a country without a derrick.
Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely
and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning
in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair
green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding
through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and
huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of
shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue
with haze, stretching away in billowy perspective to the horizon,
with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-
summit, which we knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural
lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cush-
ioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along
through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from
the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the
clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over
its reefs and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to
hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into
the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where fur-
tive wild things whisked and scurried by and were gone before
you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was;
and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting
to business, with a song here and a quarrel yonder and a mys-
terious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree-
trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remoteness of the
woods. And by-and-by out we would swing again into the
glare.
About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out
into the glare-it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours.
or so after sun-up-it wasn't as pleasant as it had been.
It was
beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a
very long pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious
how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once
get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all at first, I began
to mind now- and more and more, too, all the time. The first
ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to
care; I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and
dropped it out of my mind. But now it was different: I wanted
it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest;
I couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my
VII-239
## p. 3810 (#172) ###########################################
3810
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
temper, and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor
without any pockets in it. You see I had my handkerchief in
my helmet, and some other things; but it was that kind of a
helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred
to me when I put it there; and in fact I didn't know it. I
supposed it would be particularly convenient there.
And so
now the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and
yet not get-at-able, made it all the worse and the harder to
bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you
want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took my mind
off from everything else; took it clear off and centred it in my
helmet; and mile after mile there it stayed, imagining the hand-
kerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggra-
vating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes,
and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing on paper,
but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of
misery. I would not say it if it was not so.
I made up my
mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look
how it might and people say what they would. Of course these
iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous,
and maybe raise sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort
first and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and
then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in
clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and
of course I said things I oughtn't to have said,—I don't deny
that. I am not better than others. We couldn't seem to meet
anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even an ogre; and in the
mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an ogre
with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of noth-
ing but getting his armor; but so I got his bandana, he could
keep his hardware for all me.
Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You
see the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more
and more all the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every
little thing irritates you. When I trotted I rattled like a crate
of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem
to stand that shield slatting and banging, now about my breast,
now around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints
creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbar-
row does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gait, I was
like to get fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went
## p. 3811 (#173) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3811
the heavier the iron settled down on you, and the more and more
tons you seemed to weigh every minute.
book is a story which details some passages in the life of an
ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of
my time out West there. He has run away from his persecut-
ing father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to
make a nice truth-telling respectable boy of him; and with him
a slave of the widow's has also escaped. They have found at
fragment of a lumber raft (it is high water and dead summer-
time), and are floating down the river by night and hiding in
the willows by day,-bound for Cairo,- whence the negro will
seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a fog, they
## p. 3790 (#152) ###########################################
3790
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
pass Cairo without knowing it. By-and-by they begin to sus-
pect the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal
suspense by swimming down to a huge raft which they have
seen in the distance ahead of them, creeping aboard under cover
of the darkness, and gathering the needed information by eaves-
dropping:-
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he
is impatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by-and-
by Jim said it was such a black night now that it wouldn't be
no risk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and
listen, they would talk about Cairo, because they would be cal-
culating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or anyway they
would send boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or some-
thing. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could
'most always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river,
and struck out for the raft's light. By-and-by, when I got down
nearly to her, I eased up and went slow and cautious. But
everything was all right-nobody at the sweeps. So I swum
down along the raft till I was 'most abreast the camp fire in the
middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got in
amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the
fire. There was thirteen men there - they was the watch on
deck, of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot too. They
had a jug, and tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. One
man was singing-roaring, you may say; and it wasn't a nice
song for a parlor anyway. He roared through his nose, and
strung out the last word of every line very long. When he was
done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung. It begun:-
―
―
"There was a woman in our towdn,
In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell),
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wedl.
"Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo,
Ri-loo, riloo, rilay - - - e,
She loved her husband dear-i-lee,
But another man twyste as wed'1. "
And so on
―
- fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he
was going to start on the next verse one of them said it was
## p. 3791 (#153) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3791
the tune the old cow died on; and another one said, "Oh, give
us a rest. " And another one told him to take a walk. They
made fun of him till he got mad and jumped up and begun to
cuss the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest
man there jumped up and says:-
"Set whar you are, gentlemen.
Leave him to me; he's my
meat.
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his
heels together every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that
was all hung with fringes, and says, "You lay thar tell the
chawin-up's done;" and flung his hat down, which was all over
ribbons, and says, "You lay thar tell his sufferins is over. "
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together
again and shouted out:-
―――――
-
Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted,
copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! - Look
at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Deso-
lation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-
brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the
mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a
bar' of whisky for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a
bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I
split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the
thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me
room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and
the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on
me, gentlemen! - and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm
'bout to turn myself loose! "
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head
and looking fierce and kind of swelling around in a little circle,
tucking up his wrist-bands and now and then straightening up
and beating his breast with his fist, saying "Look at me, gen-
tlemen! " When he got through he jumped up and cracked his
heels together three times, and let off a roaring "Whoo-oop!
I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that lives! "
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch
hat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward,
with his back sagged and his south end sticking out far, and his
fists a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went
around in a little circle about three times, swelling himself up
## p. 3792 (#154) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3792
and breathing hard. Then he straightened, and jumped up and
cracked his heels together three times before he lit again (that
made them cheer), and he begun to shout like this:-
"Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of
sorrow's a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my
powers a-working! whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin; don't let me
get a start! Smoked glass, here, for all! Don't attempt to look
at me with the naked eye, gentlemen! When I'm playful I use
the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine,
and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head
with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!
When I'm cold I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when
I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty
I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range
the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow
your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun's face and
make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon and
hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the mountains!
Contemplate me through leather- don't use the naked eye! I'm
the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massa-
cre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments,
the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!
The boundless vastness of the great American desert is my
inclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises! "
He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before
he lit (they cheered him again), and as he came down he shouted
out: "Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! "
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing
again the first one the one they called Bob; next, the Child
of Calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both
got at it at the same time, swelling round and round each other
and punching their fists 'most into each other's faces, and whoop-
ing and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called the Child names,
and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob called
him a heap rougher names, and the Child come back at him with
the very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's
hat off, and the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat
about six foot; Bob went and got it and said never mind, this
warn't going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man
that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better look
--
-
―
## p. 3793 (#155) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3793
out; for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a
living man, that he would have to answer to him with the best
blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than
he was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warn-
ing, now, never to cross his path again, for he could never rest
till he had waded in his blood; for such was his nature, though
he was sparing him now on account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growl-
ing and shaking their heads and going on about what they was
going to do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and
says:
"Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and
I'll thrash the two of ye! "
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this
way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawl-
ing faster than they could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes.
till they begged like dogs-and how the other lot did yell and
laugh and clap their hands all the way through, and shout "Sail
in, Corpse-Maker! " "Hi! at him again, Child of Calamity! "
"Bully for you, little Davy! " Well, it was a perfect pow-wow
for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes
when they got through. Little Davy made them own up that
they was sneaks and cowards, and not fit to eat with a dog or
drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook hands with
each other very solemn, and said they had always respected
each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones. So then
they washed their faces in the river; and just then there was a
loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to han-
dle the after-sweeps.
VII-238
## p. 3794 (#156) ###########################################
3794
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
A STEAMBOAT LANDING AT A SMALL TOWN
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
―――――
Ο
NCE a day a cheap gaudy packet arrived upward from St.
Louis, and another downward from Keokuk, Before these
events, the day was glorious with expectancy; after them,
the day was a dead and empty thing. Not only the boys but
the whole village felt this. After all these years I can picture
that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town
drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets
empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of
the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted
back against the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their
faces, asleep with shingle-shavings enough around to show
what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along
the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and
seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the
"levee "; a pile of "skids" on the slope of the stone-paved
wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of
them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but no-
body to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against
them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Missis-
sippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the
dense forest away on the other side; the "point" above the
town and the "point" below, bounding the river-glimpse and
turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant
and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears above
one of those remote "points"; instantly a negro drayman, fa-
mous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry,
"S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'! " and the scene changes! The town
drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays
follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution,
and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving.
Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to
a common centre, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten
their eyes upon the coming boat, as upon a wonder they are see-
ing for the first time. And the boat is rather a handsome sight
She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two
tall fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind
too.
## p. 3795 (#157) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3795
swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, all glass and "gin-
gerbread," perched on top of the "texas" deck behind them; the
paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays
above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and
the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white rail-
ings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the fur-
nace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper
decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big
bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the black-
est smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys — a
husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch-pine just before
arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the
broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied
deck hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of
rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the
gauge-cocks; the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels
stop; then they turn back, churning the water to a foam, and
the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as there is to get
aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to dis-
charge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling
and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes
later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-
staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard
asleep by the skids once more.
THE HIGH RIVER: AND A PHANTOM PILOT
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
D
URING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable
nuisance. We were running chute after chute,- a new
world to me, and if there was a particularly cramped
place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn
there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a still
worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal
water. And then there would be no end of profane cordialities
exchanged.
――――
Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our
way cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would sud-
## p. 3796 (#158) ###########################################
3796
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
denly be broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in an
instant a log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil,
close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives, but
snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all the
steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a
rock or a solid log raft with a steamboat when he can get ex-
cused.
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always
carried a large assortment of religious tracts with them in those
old departed steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times
a day we would be cramping up around a bar, while a string of
these small-fry rascals were drifting down into the head of the
bend away above and beyond us a couple of miles. Now a skiff
would dart away from one of them, and come fighting its labori-
ous way across the desert of water. It would «< ease all," in the
shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would shout,
"Gimme a pa-a-per! >>
as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The
clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these
were picked up without comment, you might notice that now a
dozen other skiffs had been drifting down upon us without say-
ing anything. You understand, they had been waiting to see
how No. I was going to fare. No. 1 making no comment, all
the rest would bend to their oars and come on now; and as fast
as they came the clerk would heave over neat bundles of reli-
gious tracts, tied to shingles. The amount of hard swearing which
twelve packages of religious literature will command when im-
partially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have
pulled a heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is
simply incredible.
As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my
vision. By the time the river was over its banks we had for-
saken our old paths and were hourly climbing over bars that
had stood ten feet out of water before; we were shaving stumpy
shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had always
seen avoided before; we were clattering through chutes like that
of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken wall of
timber till our nose was almost at the very spot. Some of these
chutes were utter solitudes. The dense untouched forest over-
hung both banks of the crooked little crack, and one could
believe that human creatures had never intruded there before.
The swinging grapevines, the grassy nooks and vistas, glimpsed
## p. 3797 (#159) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3797
as we swept by, the flowering creepers waving their red blos-
soms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the spendthrift rich-
ness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away there.
The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep, except
at the head; the current was gentle; under the "points" the
water was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that
where the tender willow thickets projected you could bury your
boat's broadside in them as you tore along, and then you seemed
fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms and
wretcheder little log cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking
a foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-
racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top rail,
elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharg-
ing the result at floating chips through crevices left by lost
teeth; while the rest of the family and the few farm animals
were huddled together in an empty wood flat riding at her moor-
ings close at hand. In this flatboat the family would have to
cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days
(or possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet.
and let them get back to their log cabin and their chills again—
chills being a merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to en-
able them to take exercise without exertion. And this sort of
watery camping out was a thing which these people were rather
liable to be treated to a couple of times a year: by the Decem-
ber rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise out of the Missis-
sippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at least
enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and then,
and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated
the blessing too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide
open and made the most of these occasions. Now what could
these banished creatures find to do to keep from dying of the
blues during the low-water season!
Once in one of these lovely island chutes we found our
course completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will
serve to show how narrow some of the chutes were.
The pas-
sengers had an hour's recreation in a virgin wilderness while the
boat hands chopped the bridge away; for there was no such
thing as turning back, you comprehend.
From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its
banks, you have no particular trouble in the night, for the
## p. 3798 (#160) ###########################################
3798
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
thousand-mile wall of dense forest that guards the two banks all
the way is only gapped with a farm or wood-yard opening at
intervals, and so you can't "get out of the river» much easier
than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from Baton Rouge
to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more than
a mile wide, and very deep-as much as two hundred feet, in
places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are
shorn of their timber and bordered by continuous sugar planta-
tions, with only here and there a scattering sapling or row of
ornamental China-trees. The timber is shorn off clear to the
rear of the plantations, from two to four miles. When the first
frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off their crops in a
hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, they form
the refuse of the stalks (which they call bagasse) into great piles
and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the ba-
gasse is used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar-mills. Now
the piles of damp bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's
own kitchen.
An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks
of the Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river,
and this embankment is set back from the edge of the shore
from ten to perhaps a hundred feet, according to circumstances;
say thirty or forty feet as a general thing. Fill that whole
region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred
miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks,
and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how
she will feel. And see how you will feel too! You find your-
self away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless,
that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you
cannot discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always
imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. The plan-
tations themselves are transformed by the smoke and look like a
part of the sea. All through your watch you are tortured with
the exquisite misery of uncertainty. You hope you are keeping
in the river, but you do not know. All that you are sure about
is that you are likely to be within six feet of the bank and de-
struction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore.
And you are sure also that if you chance suddenly to fetch up
against the embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you
will have the small comfort of knowing that it is about what
you were expecting to do. One of the great Vicksburg packets
## p. 3799 (#161) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
379. 9
darted out into a sugar plantation one night, at such a time, and
had to stay there a week. But there was no novelty about it: it
had often been done before.
I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a
curious thing while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in
that it is connected with piloting. There used to be an excel-
lent pilot on the river, a Mr. X. , who was a somnambulist. It
was said that if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of
river, he was pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep and
do strange things. He was once fellow pilot for a trip or two
with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger packet.
During a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy,
but got over it by-and-by, as X. seemed content to stay in his
bed when asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching
Helena, Arkansas; the water was low, and the crossing above
the town in a very blind and tangled condition. X. had seen
the crossing since Ealer had, and as the night was particularly
drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering whether he had
not better have X. called to assist in running the place, when
the door opened and X. walked in. Now on very dark nights,
light is a deadly enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you
stand in a lighted room on such a night, you cannot see things
in the street to any purpose; but if you put out the lights and
stand in the gloom you can make out objects in the street pretty
well. So on very dark nights pilots do not smoke; they allow
no fire in the pilot-house stove if there is a crack which can
allow the least ray to escape; they order the furnaces to be
curtained with huge tarpaulins and the skylights to be closely
blinded. Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The
undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X. 's
voice. This said: :-
"Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you
have, and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself
easier than I could tell you how to do it. "
"It is kind of you, and I swear I am willing. I haven't got
another drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning
around and around the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I
can't tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around
like a whirligig. "
So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless.
The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,
## p. 3800 (#162) ###########################################
3800
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two, and then stood
at ease, coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as
gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday. When
Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished he had not
confessed! He stared and wondered, and finally said: -
"Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that
was another mistake of mine. "
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He
rang for the leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked
the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks, then stood at
the centre of the wheel and peered blandly out into the black-
ness, fore and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled
more and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and the dead.
silence and suspense of "drifting" followed; when the shoalest
water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her hand-
somely over, and then began to work her warily into the next
system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads.
and engines followed, the boat slipped through without touching
bottom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the
crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by
inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water
was cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went
swinging over the reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great relieving
sigh, and said: -
"That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on
the Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done, if I
hadn't seen it. "
There was no reply, and he added:-
"Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run
down and get a cup of coffee. "
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the
"texas," and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the
night watchman happened in, and was about to happen out
again, when he noticed Ealer and exclaimed: -
"Who is at the wheel, sir? "
"X. "
"Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house
companion-way, three steps at a jump! Nobody there!
The
great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at
>>
## p. 3801 (#163) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3801
her own sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again;
Ealer seized the wheel, set the engine back with power, and held
his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a «< tow-
head" which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf
of Mexico!
By-and-by the watchman came back and said:
"Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep when he first
came up here ? »
“No. ”
"Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the
railings, just as unconcerned as
as another man would walk a
pavement; and I put him to bed; now just this minute there
he was again, away astern, going through that sort of tight-
rope deviltry the same as before. "
"Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those
fits. But I hope he'll have them often. You just ought to
have seen him take this boat through Helena crossing. I never
saw anything so gaudy before. And if he can do such gold-
leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound
asleep, what couldn't he do if he was dead! "
AN ENCHANTING RIVER SCENE
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
THE
HE face of the water in time became a wonderful book
a book that was a dead language to the uneducated pas-
senger, 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
sparklingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who
could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dim-
ple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not over-
―
## p. 3802 (#164) ###########################################
3802
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
look 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 kept 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 slant-
ing 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 sombre shadow that fell from this forest was
broken in one place by a long ruffled trail that shone like sil-
ver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree
waved a single leafy bough, that glowed like a flame in the un-
obstructed 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 any-
thing 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
## p. 3803 (#165) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3803
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 chan-
ging 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 pro-
fessionally 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?
THE LIGHTNING PILOT
From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R. Osgood and
Company
EXT 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 getting her off that it was plain the darkness
## p. 3804 (#166) ###########################################
3804
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
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 sail-
ing 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 cross-
ing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under
the burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communi-
cated 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 reliev-
ing 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 famil-
iarity 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
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3805
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.
Quarter-less-
"M-a-r-k three!
•
>>
M-a-r-k three!
three!
Quarter twain!
Half twain!
Quarter-less — "
M-a-r-k twain!
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 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 invisi-
ble 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 im-
pulse to do something, anything, to save the vessel. But still
## p. 3806 (#168) ###########################################
3806
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
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! "
"Ay-ay, 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 tre-
mendous 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.
AN EXPEDITION AGAINST OGRES
From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: copyright 1889, by
Charles L. Webster and Company
Μ
Y EXPEDITION was all the talk that day and that night, and
the boys were very good to me, and made much of me,
and seemed to have forgotten, their vexation and disap-
pointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those
ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were them-
selves that had the contract. Well, they were good children-
but just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of
points about how to scout for giants, and how to scoop them in;
and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and
gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. But it
never occurred to one of them to reflect that if I was such a
wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3807
need salves, or instructions, or charms against enchantments, and
least of all arms and armor, on a foray of any kind-even
against fire-spouting dragons and devils hot from perdition, let
alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these common-
place ogres of the back settlements.
I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that
was the usual way; but I had the demon's own time with
my armor, and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome
to get into, and there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer
or two of blanket around your body for a sort of cushion, and
to keep off the cold iron; then you put on your sleeves and
shirt of chain-mail - these are made of small steel links woven
together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss
your shirt on to the floor it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet
fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearly the uncomfortablest
material in the world for a night-shirt, yet plenty used it for
that tax collectors and reformers, and one-horse kings with a
defective title, and those sorts of people; then you put on your
shoes flatboats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel-
and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. Next you buckle
your greaves on your legs and your cuisses on your thighs; then
come your backplate and your breastplate, and you begin to
feel crowded; then you hitch on to the breastplate the half-
petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down
in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down, and
isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal-scuttle, either for
looks, or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt on
your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints on to your arms,
your iron gauntlets on to your hands, your iron rat-trap on to
your head, with a rag of steel web hitched on to it to hang over
the back of your neck—and there you are, snug as a candle in
a candle-mold. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is
packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking,
there is so little of the meat, when you get down to it, by com-
parison with the shell.
-
―
The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as
we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as
not I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip.
How stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. He had
on his head a conical steel casque that only came down to his
ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended
## p. 3808 (#170) ###########################################
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
down to his upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of
him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain-mail, trousers and all.
But pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside gar-
ment, which of course was of chain-mail, as I said, and hung
straight from his shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to
the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he
could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. He was
going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it, too. I would
have given a good deal for that ulster, but it was too late now
to be fooling around. The sun was just up; the king and the
court were all on hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it
wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your
horse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get disappointed.
They carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the
drug-store, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix
your feet in the stirrups; and all the while you do feel so
strange and stuffy and like somebody else-like somebody that
has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or some-
thing like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort
of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up
the mast they called a spear in its socket by my left foot, and I
gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield around my
neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to
sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a
maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. There was
nothing more to do now but for that damsel to get up behind
me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around
me to hold on.
And so we started; and everybody gave us a good-by and
waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met,
going down the hill and through the village, was respectful to us
except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. They said:-
"Oh, what a guy! " and hove clods at us.
In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They
don't respect anything, they don't care for anything or anybody.
They say "Go up, bald-head! " to the prophet going his unoffend-
ing way in the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy
gloom of the Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same
way in Buchanan's administration; I remember, because I was
there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled with
his boys; and I wanted to get down and settle with mine, but it
## p. 3809 (#171) ###########################################
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3809
wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up again. I hate
a country without a derrick.
Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely
and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning
in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair
green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding
through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and
huge lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of
shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue
with haze, stretching away in billowy perspective to the horizon,
with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-
summit, which we knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural
lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cush-
ioned turf giving out no sound of footfall; we dreamed along
through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from
the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the
clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over
its reefs and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to
hear; and at times we left the world behind and entered into
the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where fur-
tive wild things whisked and scurried by and were gone before
you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was;
and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting
to business, with a song here and a quarrel yonder and a mys-
terious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree-
trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remoteness of the
woods. And by-and-by out we would swing again into the
glare.
About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out
into the glare-it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours.
or so after sun-up-it wasn't as pleasant as it had been.
It was
beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a
very long pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious
how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once
get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all at first, I began
to mind now- and more and more, too, all the time. The first
ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to
care; I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and
dropped it out of my mind. But now it was different: I wanted
it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest;
I couldn't get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my
VII-239
## p. 3810 (#172) ###########################################
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
temper, and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor
without any pockets in it. You see I had my handkerchief in
my helmet, and some other things; but it was that kind of a
helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred
to me when I put it there; and in fact I didn't know it. I
supposed it would be particularly convenient there.
And so
now the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and
yet not get-at-able, made it all the worse and the harder to
bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you
want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took my mind
off from everything else; took it clear off and centred it in my
helmet; and mile after mile there it stayed, imagining the hand-
kerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggra-
vating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes,
and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing on paper,
but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of
misery. I would not say it if it was not so.
I made up my
mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look
how it might and people say what they would. Of course these
iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous,
and maybe raise sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort
first and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and
then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in
clouds and get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and
of course I said things I oughtn't to have said,—I don't deny
that. I am not better than others. We couldn't seem to meet
anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even an ogre; and in the
mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre; that is, an ogre
with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of noth-
ing but getting his armor; but so I got his bandana, he could
keep his hardware for all me.
Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You
see the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more
and more all the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every
little thing irritates you. When I trotted I rattled like a crate
of dishes, and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem
to stand that shield slatting and banging, now about my breast,
now around my back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints
creaked and screeched in that wearisome way that a wheelbar-
row does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gait, I was
like to get fried in that stove; and besides, the quieter you went
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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS
3811
the heavier the iron settled down on you, and the more and more
tons you seemed to weigh every minute.
