Life on the Mississippi, Part 5. eBook

We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed, lady-like young girls, together with sundry Russia-leather bags.  A strange place for such folk!  No carriage was waiting.  The party moved off as if they had not expected any, and struck down a winding country road afoot.

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.

Chapter 24 My Incognito is Exploded

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.