It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of
the river in all the different ways that could be
thought of,—upside down, wrong end first,
inside out, fore-and-aft, and ’thortships,’—and
then know what to do on gray nights when it hadn’t
any shape at all. So I set about it. In
the course of time I began to get the best of this
knotty lesson, and my self-complacency moved to the
front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed, and
ready to start it to the rear again. He opened
on me after this fashion—
’How much water did we have in the middle crossing
at Hole-in-the-Wall, trip before last?’
I considered this an outrage. I said—
’Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing
through that tangled place for three-quarters of an
hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I can remember
such a mess as that?’
’My boy, you’ve got to remember it.
You’ve got to remember the exact spot and the
exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest
water, in everyone of the five hundred shoal places
between St. Louis and New Orleans; and you mustn’t
get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip mixed
up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either,
for they’re not often twice alike. You
must keep them separate.’
When I came to myself again, I said—
’When I get so that I can do that, I’ll
be able to raise the dead, and then I won’t
have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I
want to retire from this business. I want a
slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only fit for a
roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough
to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn’t have
strength enough to carry them around, unless I went
on crutches.’
‘Now drop that! When I say I’ll
learn {footnote [’Teach’ is not in the
river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it.
And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or
kill him.’
There was no use in arguing with a person like
this. I promptly put such a strain on my memory
that by and by even the shoal water and the countless
crossing-marks began to stay with me. But the
result was just the same. I never could more
than get one knotty thing learned before another presented
itself. Now I had often seen pilots gazing at
the water and pretending to read it as if it were
a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.
A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby seemed
to think me far enough advanced to bear a lesson on
water-reading. So he began—
’Do you see that long slanting line on the face
of the water? Now, that’s a reef.
Moreover, it’s a bluff reef. There is
a solid sand-bar under it that is nearly as straight
up and down as the side of a house. There is
plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on
top of it. If you were to hit it you would knock
the boat’s brains out. Do you see where
the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to
fade away?’
