chandeliers; the clerk’s office was elegant,
the bar was marvelous, and the bar-keeper had been
barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The
boiler deck (i.e.
the second story of the boat, so
to speak) was as spacious as a church, it seemed to
me; so with the forecastle; and there was no pitiful
handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down
there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires
were fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces,
and over them were eight huge boilers! This was
unutterable pomp. The mighty engines—but
enough of this. I had never felt so fine before.
And when I found that the regiment of natty servants
respectfully ‘sir’d’ me, my satisfaction
was complete.
When I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis
was gone and I was lost. Here was a piece of
river which was all down in my book, but I could make
neither head nor tail of it: you understand,
it was turned around. I had seen it when coming
up-stream, but I had never faced about to see how
it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke
again, for it was plain that I had got to learn this
troublesome river both ways.
The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to
‘look at the river.’ What is called
the ‘upper river’ (the two hundred miles
between St. Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes
in) was low; and the Mississippi changes its channel
so constantly that the pilots used to always find it
necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look,
when their boats were to lie in port a week; that
is, when the water was at a low stage. A deal
of this ‘looking at the river’ was done
by poor fellows who seldom had a berth, and whose
only hope of getting one lay in their being always
freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the
shoes of some reputable pilot, for a single trip,
on account of such pilot’s sudden illness, or
some other necessity. And a good many of them
constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not
because they ever really hoped to get a berth, but
because (they being guests of the boat) it was cheaper
to ‘look at the river’ than stay ashore
and pay board. In time these fellows grew dainty
in their tastes, and only infested boats that had
an established reputation for setting good tables.
All visiting pilots were useful, for they were always
ready and willing, winter or summer, night or day,
to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or
assist the boat’s pilots in any way they could.
They were likewise welcome because all pilots are
tireless talkers, when gathered together, and as they
talk only about the river they are always understood
and are always interesting. Your true pilot
cares nothing about anything on earth but the river,
and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride
of kings.
