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IDuring the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship served under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of
steamboatmen and many varieties of steamboats. I am to this day
profiting somewhat by that experience; for in that brief, sharp
schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted with about all
the different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction,
biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me that the average shoreemployment requires as much as forty years to equip a man with
this sort of an education. When I say I am still profiting by this
thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men—
no, it has not done that, for judges of men are born, not made.
My profit is various in kind and degree, but the feature of it which
I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to
my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or
biography I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the
reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.
The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of
that vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer Pennsylvania.
He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horsefaced, ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault-hunting, motet
magnifying tyrant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with
dread at my heart. No matter how good a time I might have been
having with the off-watch below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft, my soul became lead in my body
the moment I approached the pilothouse.
I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that
man. The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was "straightening
down." I ascended to the pilothouse in high feather, and very proud
to be semiofficially a member of the executive family of so fast and
famous a boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middle of the
room, all fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not
look around. I thought he took a furtiveglance at me
out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this
notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken.
By this time he was picking his way among some
dangerous "breaks" abreast the woodyards; therefore
it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped
softly to the high bench and took a seat.
There was silence for ten minutes; then my new
boss turned and inspected me deliberately and
painstakingly from head to heel for about—as it
seemed to me—a quarter of an hour. After which he removed his countenance 3and I saw it no more
for some seconds; then it came around once more,
and this question greeted me: "Are you Horace
Bigsby's cub?"4
"Yes, sir."
After this there was a pause and another
inspection. Then: "What's your name?" I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the only
thing he ever forgot; for although I was with him many months he
never addressed himself to me in any other way than "Here!" and
then his command followed.
"Where was you born?"
"In Florida, Missouri."
A pause. Then: "Dern sight better stayed there!"
By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumped
my family history out of me.
The leads 5were going now in the first crossing. This interrupted
the inquest. 6When the leads had been laid in he resumed:
"How long you been on the river?"
I told him. After a pause:
"Where'd you get them shoes?"
I gave him the information.
"Hold up your foot!"
I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high sugarloaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, "Well,
I'll be dod derned!" and returned to his wheel.
What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing
which is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It
must have been all of fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes of dull,
homesick silence—before that long horse-face swung round upon
me again—and then what a change! It was as red as fire, and
every muscle in it was working. Now came this shriek: "Here! You
going to set there all day?"
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness
of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said apologetically:
"I have had no orders, sir."
"You've had no orders! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have
orders! Our father was a gentleman —and we've been to school.
Yes, we are a gentleman, too, and got to have orders! Orders, is it?
Orders is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'll learn you to swell
yourself up and blow around here about your dod-derned orders!
G'way from the wheel!" (I had approached it without knowing it.)
I moved back a step or two and stood as in a dream, all my
senses stupefied by this frantic assault.
"What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to the
texas-tender!? Come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!"
The moment I got back to the pilothouse Brown said: "Here!
What was you doing down there all this time?" "I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go
all the way to the pantry."
"Derned likely story! Fill up the stove."
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat.
Presently he shouted: "Put down that shovel!
Derndest numskull I ever saw—ain't even got sense
enough to load up a stove."
All through the watch this sort of thing went on.
Yes, and the subsequent watches were much like it
during a stretch of months. As I have said, I soon
got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The
moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest
night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and
knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit
out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would
say: "Here! Take the wheel."
Two minutes later: "Where in the nation you
going to? Pull her down! pull her down!"
After another moment: "Say! You going to hold
her all day? Let her go—meet her! meet her!"
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch
the wheel from me, and meet her himself, pouring
out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He
was having good times now; for his boss, George
Ealer, was as kind-hearted as Brown wasn't.
Ritchie had steered for Brown the season before;
consequently, he knew exactly how to entertain
himself and plague me, all by the one operation.
Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on
Ealer's watch, Ritchie would sit back on the bench
and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of
"Snatch her! Snatch her! Derndest mudcat I ever
saw!" "Here! Where are you going now? Going to
run over that snag?"' "Pull her down! Don't you hear me? Pull her
down!" "There she goes! Just as I expected! I told you not to cramp
that reef. G'way from the wheel!"
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was;
and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgering
was pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub
had to take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and criticism; and we all believed that there was a United
States law making it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a
pilot who was on duty.
However, I could imagine myself killing Brown; there was no
law against that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river in my mind,
as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleasure, and killed
Brown. I killed Brown every night for months; not in old, stale,
commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones—ways that
were sometimes surprising for freshness of design and ghastliness
of situation and environment.
Brown was always watching for a pretext to find fault; and if he
could fmd no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would scold
you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar,
and for not hugging it; for "pulling down" when not invited, and for
not pulling down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and
for waiting for orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to fmd
fault with everything you did and another invariable rule of his was
to throw all his remarks (to you) into the form of an insult.
One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and
heavily laden. Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at
the other, standing by to "pull down" or "shove up." He cast a furtive
glance at me every now and then. I had long ago learned what that
meant; viz., he was trying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what
shape it was going to take. By and by he stepped back from the
wheel and said in his usual snarly way:
"Here! See if you've got gumption enough to round her to."
This was simply bound to be a success; nothing could prevent
it; for he had never allowed me to round the boat to before;
consequently, no matter how I might do the thing, he could find
free fault with it. He stood back there with his greedy eye on me,
and the result was what might have been foreseen: I lost my head
in a quarter of a minute, and didn't know what I was about; I
started too early to bring the boat around, but detected a green
gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and corrected my mistake. I started
around once more while too high up, but corrected myself again in
time. I made other false moves, and still managed to save myself;
but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I tumbled into the
very worst blunder of all—I got too far down before beginning to
fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was come.
His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled
me across the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel
down, and began to pour out a stream of vituperation 8upon me
which lasted till he was out of breath. In the course of this speech
he called me all the different kinds of hard names he could think
of, and once or twice I thought he was even going to swear—but he
had never done that, and he didn't this time. "Dod dern" was the
nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing.
Two trips later I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering;
I was "pulling down." My younger brother Henry appeared on the ricane deck, and shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other,
a mile or so below. Brown gave no intimationthat he had heard anything. But that was his way: he never condescended to take notice of
an underclerk. The wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he
always pretended he wasn't), and I very much doubted if he had
heard the order. If I had had two heads, I would have spoken; but as
I had only one, it seemed judiciousto take care of it; so I kept still.
Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation.
Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said: "Let her come
around, sir, let her come around. Didn't Henry tell you to land here?"
"No, sir!"
"I sent him up to do it."
"He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned
fool. He never said anything."
"Didn't you hear him?" asked the captain of me.
Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business, but there
was no way to avoid it; so I said: "Yes, sir."
I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it.
It was: "Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind."
I closed my mouth, according to instructions. An hour later Henry
entered the pilothouse, unaware of what had been going on. He was
a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry toknew Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began, straightway:
"Here! Why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?"
"I did tell you, Mr. Brown."
"It's a lie!"
I said: "You lie, yourself. He did tell you."
Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a
moment he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me: "I'll
attend to your case in a half a minute!" then to Henry, "And you
leave the pilothouse; out with you!"
It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and
even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown,
with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal
and sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool, and
I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched him out.
I had committed the crime of crimes—I had lifted my hand
against a pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and
squared my long account with this person while I had the chance;
consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with my fists a considerable time. I do not know how long, the pleasure of it probably
made it seem longer than it really was; but in the end he struggled
free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat tearing down the
river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody at the helm!
However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage,
and correspondingly long and deep: and the boat was steering herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was
only luck—a body might have found her charging into the woods.
Perceiving at a glance that the Pennsylvania was in no danger,
Brown gathered up the big spyglass, war-club fashion, and
ordered me out of the pilothouse with more than ordinary bluster.
But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried,
and criticized his grammar. I reformed his ferocious
speeches for him, and put them into good English,
calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the
dialect of the collieries 9whence he
was extracted. He could have
done his part to admiration in a
crossfire of mere vituperation, of
course; but he was not equipped
for this species of controversy; so
he presently laid aside his glass
and took the wheel, muttering
and shaking his head; and I see him come, for I
iretired to the bench. The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I saw the old captain looking up
from amid the crowd. I said to myself, "Now I am done for!" for
although, as a rule, he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the
boat's family, and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could bethrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses. Now go—and mind
you, not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you! You've been
guilty of a great crime, yOu whelp!"
I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty
deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat
thighs after I had closed his door.
When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain, who
was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded
that I be put ashore in New Orleans—and added: "I'll never turn a
wheel on this boat again while that cub stays."
The captain said: "But he needn't come round when you are on
watch, Mr. Brown."
"I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has got
to go ashore." "Very well," said the captain, "let it be yourself," and
resumed his talk with the passengers.
During the brief remainder of the trip I knew how an emancipated
slave feels, for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay
at landings I listened to George Ealer's flute, or to his readings
from his two Bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare,
or I played chess with him—and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move and ran the game