Life on The Mississippi (14 page)

“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 center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness, 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 handsomely 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 noted Ealer and exclaimed—

“Who is at the wheel, sir?”

“X.”

“Dart for the pilothouse, quicker than lightning!”

The next moment both men were flying up the pilothouse companionway, three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set an engine back with power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a “towhead” 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 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 tightrope 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, kidglove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound asleep, what
couldn’t
he do if he was dead!”

When the river is very low, and one’s steamboat is “drawing all the water” there is in the channel—or a few inches more, as was often the case in the old times—one must be painfully circumspect in his piloting. We used to have to “sound” a number of particularly bad places almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage.

Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just above the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his “cub” or steersman and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out in the yawl—provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury a regularly devised “sounding boat”—and proceeds to hunt for the best water, the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spyglass, meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat’s whistle, signifying “try higher up” or “try lower down”; for the surface of the water, like an oil painting, is more expressive and intelligible when inspected from a little distance than very close at hand. The whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except when the wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water’s surface. When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to “hold her up to starboard”; or “let her fall off to larboard”;
⁹
or “steady—steady as you go.”

When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the shoalest part of the reef, the command is given to “ease all!” Then the men stop rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order is, “Stand by with the buoy!” The moment the shallowest point is reached, the pilot delivers the order, “Let go the buoy!” and over she goes. If the pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better water higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand their oars straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the boat’s whistle indicates that the signal has been seen; then the men “give way” on their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; the steamer comes creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her power for the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment, turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and the sand, and gains the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn’t; maybe she “strikes and swings.” Then she has to while away several hours (or days) sparring herself off.

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end turned up; it is a reversed schoolhouse bench, with one of the supports left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current would pull the buoy under water. At night a paper lantern with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding. There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern sheets and steer a swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the world of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will simply say, “Let her go about!” and leave the rest to the cub, who instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, “Ease starboard! Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way! With a will, men!” The cub enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching all the yawl’s movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastened upon the yawl’s lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims away in the remote distance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilothouse with her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love with her. So did Mr. Thornburg’s cub, Tom G——. Tom and I had been bosom friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise. I told the girl a good many of my river adventures, and made myself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering. However, virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead in the contest. About this time something happened which promised handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o’clock at night, when the passengers would still be up; it would be Mr. Thornburg’s watch, therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect love of a sounding boat—long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound; her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a steamer where no end of style was put on.

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night, and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman’s uneducated eyes could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory. As I hurried through the engine room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I met Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself of a mean speech:

“Ain’t you glad
you
don’t have to go out sounding?”

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said—

“Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding pole yourself. I was going after it, but I’d see you in Halifax, now, before I’d do it.”

“Who wants you to get it? I don’t. It’s in the sounding boat.”

“It ain’t, either. It’s been new painted; and it’s been up on the ladies’ cabin guards two days, drying.”

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching and wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:

“Give way, men!”

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding boat booming away, the unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him with the sounding pole which I had been sent on a fool’s errand to fetch. Then that young girl said to me—

“Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night! Do you think there is any danger?”

I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom, to help in the pilothouse. By and by the boat’s lantern disappeared, and after an interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile away. Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment, backed the steamer out, and made for it. We flew along for a while, then slackened steam and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg exclaimed—

“Hello, the buoy lantern’s out!”

He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said—

“Why, there it is again!”

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads. Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again! Mr. Thornburg muttered:

“Well, I don’t understand this. I believe that buoy has drifted off the reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left. No matter, it is safest to run over it, anyhow.”

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light. Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg seized the bell ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed—

“My soul, it’s the sounding boat!”

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below—a pause—and then a sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed—

“There! The paddle wheel has ground the sounding boat to lucifer matches! Run! See who is killed!”

I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew what to do; at my chief’s order they sprang at the right instant, seized the guard, and were hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding yawl swept aft to the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of the men and the cub, Tom, were missing—a fact which spread like wildfire over the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway, ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them say, “Poor fellows! Poor boy, poor boy!”

By this time the boat’s yawl was manned and away, to search for the missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The yawl had disappeared in the other direction. Half the people rushed to one side to encourage the swimmer with their shouts; the other half rushed the other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about. By the callings, the swimmer was approaching, but some said the sound showed failing strength. The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings, leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry wrung from them such words as “Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! Is there
no
way to save him?”

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice said pluckily—

“I can make it! Stand by with a rope!”

What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his stand in the glare of a torch basket, a coil of rope in his hand, and his men grouped about him. The next moment the swimmer’s face appeared in the circle of light, and in another one the owner of it was hauled aboard, limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom.

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men. They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struck by the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at all, but had plunged headfirst into the river and dived under the wheel. It was nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody went on just the same, making a wonderful to-do over that ass, as if he had done something great. That girl couldn’t seem to have enough of that pitiful “hero” the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed her, anyway.

The way we came to mistake the sounding boat’s lantern for the buoy light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the steamer’s course, headed the sounding boat upstream, and waited. Having to wait some time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went on with his talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close down on him, but that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely, for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy light; so he sang out, “Stand by to spring for the guard, men!” and the next instant the jump was made.