‘Starboard lead there! and quick about it!’

This was another shock.  I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.  Then came the leadsman’s sepulchral cry—­

‘D-e-e-p four!’

Deep four in a bottomless crossing!  The terror of it took my breath away.

‘M-a-r-k three!...  M-a-r-k three...  Quarter less three!...  Half twain!’

This was frightful!  I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.

‘Quarter twain!  Quarter twain!  Mark twain!’

I was helpless.  I did not know what in the world to do.  I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.

‘Quarter less twain!  Nine and a half!’

We were drawing nine!  My hands were in a nerveless flutter.  I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them.  I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer—­

’Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!  Quick, Ben!  Oh, back the immortal soul out of her!’

I heard the door close gently.  I looked around, and there stood Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile.  Then the audience on the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter.  I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history.  I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said—­

’It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, wasn’t it?  I suppose I’ll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the head of 66.’

’Well, no, you won’t, maybe.  In fact I hope you won’t; for I want you to learn something by that experience.  Didn’t you know there was no bottom in that crossing?’

‘Yes, sir, I did.’

’Very well, then.  You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody else to shake your confidence in that knowledge.  Try to remember that.  And another thing:  when you get into a dangerous place, don’t turn coward.  That isn’t going to help matters any.’

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned.  Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.  It was, ’Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!’

Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting