Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0140/01409.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01409}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter XLIX}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{pilot
captain
young
boat
life
river
memphis
whom
wheel
dead}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter XLIX

Episodes In Pilot Life

     In the course of the tugboat gossip, it came out that out of every five
of my former friends who had quitted the river, four had chosen farming as an
occupation.  Of course this was not because they were peculiarly gifted
agriculturally, and thus more likely to succeed as farmers than in other
industries: the reason for their choice must be traced to some other source.
Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private and secluded from
irruptions of undesirable strangers - like the pilot-house hermitage.  And
doubtless they also chose it because on a thousand nights of black storm and
danger they had noted the twinkling lights of solitary farmhouses, as the boat
swung by, and pictured to themselves the serenity and security and coziness of
such refuges at such times, and so had by and by come to dream of that retired
and peaceful life as the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn,
and at last enjoy.

     But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished
anybody with their successes.  Their farms do not support them: they support
their farms.  The pilot-farmer disappears from the river annually, about the
breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next frost.  Then he appears
again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out of his hair, and takes a
pilot-house berth for the winter.  In this way he pays the debts which his
farming has achieved during the agricultural season.  So his river bondage is
but half broken; he is still the river's slave the hardest half of the year.

     One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it.  He knew a
trick worth two of that.  He did not propose to pauperize his farm by applying
his personal ignorance to working it.  No, he put the farm into the hands of
an agricultural expert to be worked on shares - out of every three loads of
corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third.  But at the end of the
season the pilot received no corn.  The expert explained that his share was
not reached.  The farm produced only two loads.

     Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures - the outcome
fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases.  Captain Montgomery, whom I had
steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the Confederate fleet in the great
battle before Memphis; when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought his
way through a squad of soldiers, and made a gallant and narrow escape.  He was
always a cool man; nothing could disturb his serenity.  Once when he was
captain of the Crescent City, I was bringing the boat into port at New
Orleans, and momently expecting orders from the hurricane-deck, but received
none.  I had stopped the wheels, and there my authority and responsibility
ceased.  It was evening - dim twilight; the captain's hat was perched upon the
big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but
such was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew better
than to touch a bell without orders.  My duty was to hold the boat steadily on
her calamitous course, and leave the consequences to take care of themselves -
which I did.  So we went plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting
closer and closer - the crash was bound to come very soon - and still that hat
never budged; for alas!  the captain was napping in the texas.... Things were
becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable.  It seemed to me that the
captain was not going to appear in time to see the entertainment.  But he did.
Just as we were walking into the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck,
and said, with heavenly serenity, "Set her back on both" - which I did; but a
trifle late, however, for the next moment we went smashing through that other
boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket.  The captain never
said a word to me about the matter afterward, except to remark that I had done
right, and that he hoped I would not hesitate to act in the same way again in
like circumstances.

     One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had died a
very honorable death.  His boat caught fire, and he remained at the wheel
until he got her safe to land.  Then he went out over the breast- board with
his clothing in flames, and was the last person to get ashore. He died from
his injuries in the course of two or three hours, and his was the only life
lost.

     The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of
this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escape from a like
fate which came within a second or two of being fatally too late; but there is
no instance of a pilot deserting his post to save his life while, by remaining
and sacrificing it, he might secure other lives from destruction.  It is well
worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth while to put it in
italics, too.

     The "cub" pilot is early admonished to despise all perils connected with
a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sort of death to the deep dishonor of
deserting his post while there is any possibility of his being useful in it.
And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated that even young and but
half-tried pilots can be depended upon to stick to the wheel, and die there
when occasion requires.  In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow who
perished at the wheel a great many years ago, in White River, to save the
lives of other men.  He said to the captain that if the fire would give him
time to reach a sand-bar, some distance away, all could be saved, but that to
land against the bluff bank of the river would be to insure the loss of many
lives.  He reached the bar and grounded the boat in shallow water; but by that
time the flames had closed around him, and in escaping through them he was
fatally burned.  He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as became a
pilot to reply:

     "I will not go.  If I go, nobody will be saved.  If I stay, no one will
be lost but me.  I will stay."

     There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the
pilot's.  There used to be a monument to this young fellow in that Memphis
graveyard.  While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I started out to
look for it, but our time was so brief that I was obliged to turn back before
my object was accomplished.

     The tugboat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead - blown up, near
Memphis, and killed; that several others whom I had known had fallen in the
war - one or two of them shot down at the wheel; that another and very
particular friend, whom I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his
house in New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some money in a remote
part of the city, and had never been seen again - was murdered and thrown into
the river, it was thought; that Ben Thornburg was dead long ago; also his wild
"cub," whom I used to quarrel with all through every daylight watch.  A
heedless, reckless creature he was, and always in hot water, always in
mischief.  An Arkansas passenger brought an enormous bear aboard one day, and
chained him to a life-boat on the hurricane-deck.  Thornburg's "cub" could not
rest till he had gone there and unchained the bear, to "see what he would do."
He was promptly gratified.  The bear chased him around and around the deck,
for miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning through the
railings for audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tail and went
into the texas to chew it.  The off-watch turned out with alacrity, and left
the bear in sole possession.  He presently grew lonesome, and started out for
recreation.  He ranged the whole boat - visited every part of it, with an
advance-guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voiceless vacancy behind
him; and when his owner captured him at last, those two were the only visible
beings anywhere; everybody else was in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.

     I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from
heart disease, in 1869.  The captain was on the roof at the time.  He saw the
boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and found the
pilot lying dead on the floor.

     Mr. Bixby had been blown up in Madrid Bend; was not injured, but the
other pilot was lost.

     George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis - blown into the river from
the wheel, and disabled.  The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton-bale -
mainly with his teeth - and floated until nearly exhausted, when he was
rescued by some deck-hands who were on a piece of the wreck. They tore open
the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life back into him, and
got him safe to Memphis.  He is one of Bixby's pilots on the Baton Rouge now.

     Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of
romance - somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless.  When I knew
him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, good-hearted, full of
careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to fool his
possibilities away early, and come to nothing.  In a Western city lived a rich
and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their family was a comely
young girl - sort of friend, sort of servant.  The young clerk of whom I have
been speaking - whose name was not George Johnson, but who shall be called
George Johnson for the purposes of this narrative - got acquainted with this
young girl, and they sinned; and the old foreigner found them out and rebuked
them.  Being ashamed, they lied, and said they were married; that they had
been privately married.  Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he
forgave and blessed them. After that, they were able to continue their sin
without concealment.  By and by the foreigner's wife died; and presently he
followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among the
mourners sat the two young sinners.  The will was opened and solemnly read.
It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth to Mrs. George
Johnson!

     And there was no such person.  The young sinners fled forth then and did
a very foolish thing: married themselves before an obscure justice of the
peace, and got him to antedate the thing.  That did no sort of good. The
distant relatives flocked in and exposed the fraudful date with extreme
suddenness and surprising ease, and carried off the fortune, leaving the
Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and irrevocably chained together in
honorable marriage, but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves
withal.  Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base so
telling a situation.