But the mystery was explained when we got under way
again; for these people were evidently bound for a
large town which lay shut in behind a tow-head (i.e.,
new island) a couple of miles below this landing.
I couldn’t remember that town; I couldn’t
place it, couldn’t call its name. So I
lost part of my temper. I suspected that it might
be St. Genevieve—and so it proved to be.
Observe what this eccentric river had been about:
it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly
in front of this town, cut off its river communications,
fenced it away completely, and made a ‘country’
town of it. It is a fine old place, too, and
deserved a better fate. It was settled by the
French, and is a relic of a time when one could travel
from the mouths of the Mississippi to Quebec and be
on French territory and under French rule all the way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast
a longing glance toward the pilot-house.
After a close study of the face of the pilot
on watch, I was satisfied that I had never seen him
before; so I went up there. The pilot inspected
me; I re-inspected the pilot. These customary
preliminaries over, I sat down on the high bench,
and he faced about and went on with his work.
Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar to me,
with one exception,—a large-mouthed tube
under the breast-board. I puzzled over that thing
a considerable time; then gave up and asked what it
was for.
‘To hear the engine-bells through.’
It was another good contrivance which ought to have
been invented half a century sooner. So I was
thinking, when the pilot asked—
‘Do you know what this rope is for?’
I managed to get around this question, without committing
myself.
‘Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?’
I crept under that one.
‘Where are you from?’
‘New England.’
‘First time you have ever been West?’
I climbed over this one.
’If you take an interest in such things, I can
tell you what all these things are for.’
I said I should like it.
‘This,’ putting his hand on a backing-bell
rope, ’is to sound the fire-alarm; this,’
putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, ’is to call
the texas-tender; this one,’ indicating the
whistle-lever, ’is to call the captain’—and
so he went on, touching one object after another, and
reeling off his tranquil spool of lies.
I had never felt so like a passenger before.
I thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and
wrote it down in my note-book. The pilot warmed
to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in
the good old-fashioned way. At times I was afraid
he was going to rupture his invention; but it always
stood the strain, and he pulled through all right.
He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the
river’s marvelous eccentricities of one sort
and another, and backed them up with some pretty gigantic
illustrations. For instance—
