Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0138/01386.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01386}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XXVI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{first
old
pilot-house
time
now
water
away
fight
island
kentucky}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XXVI

Under Fire

     Talk began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the
upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time.  Columbus was just
behind us, so there was a good deal said about the famous battle of Belmont.
Several of the boat's officers had seen active service in the Mississippi
war-fleet.  I gathered that they found themselves sadly out of their element
in that kind of business at first, but afterward got accustomed to it,
reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it.  One of our pilots had his
first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a pilot on a boat in the
Confederate service.  I had often had a curiosity to know how a green hand
might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all solitary and alone on high in a
pilot-house, a target for Tom, Dick, and Harry, and nobody at his elbow to
shame him from showing the white feather when matters grew hot and perilous
around him; so to me his story was valuable - it filled a gap for me which all
histories had left till that time empty.

The Pilot's First Battle

     He said:

     "It was the 7th of November.  The fight began at seven in the morning.  I
was on the R. H. W. Hill.  Took over a load of troops from Columbus.  Came
back, and took over a battery of artillery.  My partner said he was going to
see the fight; wanted me to go along.  I said, No, I wasn't anxious, I would
look at it from the pilot-house.  He said I was a coward, and left.

     "That fight was an awful sight.  General Cheatham made his men strip
their coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to h - 1 or
victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house; and then he galloped in,
at the head of his troops.  Old General Pillow, with his white hair, mounted
on a white horse, sailed in, too; leading his troops as lively as a boy.  By
and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and here they came!  tearing
along, everybody for himself and Devil take the hind-most!  and down under the
bank they scrambled, and took shelter.  I was sitting with my legs hanging out
of the pilot-house window.  All at once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my
ear.  Judged it was a bullet. I didn't stop to think about anything, I just
tilted over backward and landed on the floor, and stayed there.  The balls
came booming around. Three cannon-balls went through the chimney; one ball
took off the corner of the pilot-house; shells were screaming and bursting all
around. Mighty warm times - I wished I hadn't come.  I lay there on the pilot-
house floor, while the shots came faster and faster.  I crept in behind the
big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house.  Presently a minie-ball came
through the stove, and just grazed my head and cut my hat.  I judged it was
time to go away from there.  The captain was on the roof with a redheaded
major from Memphis - a fine-looking man.  I heard him say he wanted to leave
here, but 'that pilot is killed.' I crept over to the starboard side to pull
the bell to set her back; raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen
shot-holes through the window-panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them.
I glanced out on the water, and the spattering shot were like a hail-storm.  I
thought best to get out of that place.  I went down the pilothouse guy head
first - not feet first but head first - slid down - before I struck the deck,
the captain said we must leave there.  So I climbed up the guy and got on the
floor again. About that time they collared my partner and were bringing him up
to the pilot-house between two soldiers.  Somebody had said I was killed.  He
put his head in and saw me on the floor reaching for the backing-bells. He
said 'Oh, h - - l!  he ain't shot,' and jerked away from the men who had him
by the collar, and ran below.  We were there until three o'clock in the
afternoon, and then got away all right.

     "The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out; be honest, and
tell me the truth.  Where did you go when you went to see that battle?' He
says, 'I went down in the hold.'

     "All through that fight I was scared nearly to death.  I hardly knew
anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that but me. Next day
General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and gallant conduct.

     "I never said anything, I let it go at that.  I judged it wasn't so, but
it was not for me to contradict a general officer.

     "Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go off to the
Hot Springs.  When there, I got a good many letters from commanders saying
they wanted me to come back.  I declined, because I wasn't well enough or
strong enough; but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had made."

     A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me that that
pilot had "gilded that scare of his, in spots"; that his subsequent career in
the war was proof of it.

     We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went below and
fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy carriage
and an intelligent face.  We were approaching Island No. 10, a place so
celebrated during the war.  This gentleman's home was on the main shore in its
neighborhood.  I had some talk with him about the war- times; but presently
the discourse fell upon "feuds," for in no part of the South has the vendetta
flourished more briskly, or held out longer between warring families, than in
this particular region.  This gentleman said:

     "There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but I reckon
the first one was between the Darnells and the Watsons.  Nobody don't know now
what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the Darnells and the
Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living, which I don't think there
is.  Some says it was about a horse or a cow - anyway, it was a little matter;
the money in it wasn't of no consequence - none in the world - both families
was rich.  The thing could have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that
wouldn't do.  Rough words had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix
it up after that.  That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of
killing or crippling!  Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the
other; and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud
and kept it a-going.  And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each
other, year in and year out - making a kind of a religion of it, you see -
till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about.  Wherever a Darnell
caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was going to get
hurt - only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.  They'd
shoot one another down, right in the presence of the family.  They didn't hunt
for each other, but when they happened to meet, they pulled and begun.  Men
would shoot boys, boys would shoot men.  A man shot a boy twelve years old -
happened on him in the woods and didn't give him no chance.  If he had 'a'
given him a chance, the boy'd 'a' shot him.  Both families belonged to the
same church (everybody around here is religious); through all this fifty or
sixty years' fuss, both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship.  They lived
each side of the and the church was at a landing called Compromise.  Half the
church and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee.
Sundays you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes - men,
women, and children - and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly,
one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the Kentucky
side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against the wall, handy,
and then all hands would join in with the prayer and praise; though they say
the man next the aisle didn't kneel down, along with the rest of the family;
kind of stood guard.  I don't know; never was at that church in my life; but I
remember that that's what used to be said.

     "Twenty or twenty-five years ago one of the feud families caught a young
man of nineteen out and killed him.  Don't remember whether it was the
Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this young man
rode up - steamboat laying there at the time - and the first thing he saw was
a whole gang of the enemy.  He jumped down behind a wood-pile, but they rode
around and begun on him, he firing back, and they galloping and cavorting and
yelling and banging away with all their might.  Think he wounded a couple of
them; but they closed in on him and chased him into the river; and as he swum
along down-stream, they followed along the bank and kept on shooting at him,
and when he struck shore he was dead.  Windy Marshall told me about it.  He
saw it.  He was captain of the boat.

     "Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man and his two
sons concluded they'd leave the country.  They started to take steamboat just
above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they arrived just as the two
young Darnells was walking up the companionway with their wives on their arms.
The fight begun then, and they never got no further - both of them killed.
After that, old Darnell got into trouble with the man that run the ferry, and
the ferryman got the worst of it - and died.  But his friends shot old Darnell
through and through - filled him full of bullets, and ended him."

     The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared in ease
and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college-bred.  His loose grammar
was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance.  This habit among educated men
in the West is not universal, but it is prevalent - prevalent in the towns,
certainly, if not in the cities; and to a degree which one cannot help
noticing, and marveling at.  I heard a Westerner, who would be accounted a
highly educated man in any country, say, "Never mind, it don't make no
difference, anyway." A lifelong resident who was present heard it, but it made
no impression upon her.  She was able to recall the fact afterward, when
reminded of it; but she confessed that the words had not grated upon her ear
at the time - a confession which suggests that if educated people can hear
such blasphemous grammar, from such a source, and be unconscious of the deed,
the crime must be tolerably common - so common that the general ear has become
dulled by familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to
such affronts.

     No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has ever written
it - no one, either in the world or out of it (taking the Scriptures for
evidence on the latter point); therefore it would not be fair to exact
grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley; but they and all other
peoples may justly be required to refrain from knowingly and purposely
debauching their grammar.

     I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10.  The island which I
remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily
timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore - within two hundred yards of it, I
should say.  Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a spy-glass.  Nothing
was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and this was no longer near
the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away.
In war-times the island had been an important place, for it commanded the
situation; and, being heavily fortified, there was no getting by it.  It lay
between the upper and lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them
separate, until a junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of
land; but the island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river is
without obstruction.

     In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee, back into
Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a mile
or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.

     The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell; but otherwise unchanged
from its former condition and aspect.  Its blocks of frame houses were still
grouped in the same old flat plain, and environed by the same old forests.  It
was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither grown nor diminished
in size.  It was said that the recent high water had invaded it and damaged
its looks.  This was surprising news; for in low water the river-bank is very
high there (fifty feet), and in my day an overflow had always been considered
an impossibility.  This present flood of 1882 will doubtless be celebrated in
the river's history for several generations before a deluge of like magnitude
shall be seen. It put all the unprotected lowlands under water, from Cairo to
the mouth; it broke down the levees in a great many places, on both sides of
the river; and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the
Mississippi was seventy miles wide!  a number of lives were lost, and the
destruction of property was fearful.  The crops were destroyed, houses washed
away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take refuge on scattering
elevations here and there in field and forest, and wait in peril and suffering
until the boats put in commission by the national and local governments, and
by newspaper enterprise, could come and rescue them.  The properties of
multitudes of people were under water for months, and the poorer ones must
have starved by the hundred if succor had not been promptly afforded. ^1 The
water had been falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we found
the banks still under water.

[Footnote 1: For a detailed and interesting description of the great flood,
written on board of the New Orleans Times-Democrat's relief boat, see Appendix
A.]