Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0137/01378.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 12KB | 243 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01378}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XVIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{brown
wheel
orders
time
find
moment
now
boat
day
high}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XVIII

I Take A Few Extra Lessons

     During the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship I served
under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and many
varieties of steamboats; for it was not always convenient for Mr. Bixby to
have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody else.  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 shore-employment
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 - the man
referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome. He was
a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy,
malicious, snarling, fault-hunting, mote-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 pilot-house.

     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 pilot-house in high feather, and very proud to be
semi-officially 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 furtive glance 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 and 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?"

     "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 were going now in the first crossing.  This interrupted the
inquest.  When 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 sugar- loaf
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 - owned slaves - 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 pilot-house 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
mud-cat 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
find 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 find 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 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 upon 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, for he had been brought up with a
wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone.

     That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience on the
hurricane-deck.  When I went to bed that night, I killed Brown in seventeen
different ways - all of them new.