‘How long you been on the river?’

I told him.  After a pause—­

‘Where’d you get them shoes?’

I gave him the information.

‘Hold up your foot!’

I did so.  He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, ‘Well, I’ll be dod derned!’ and returned to his wheel.

What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing which is still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then.  It must have been all of fifteen minutes—­fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence—­ before that long horse-face swung round upon me again—­and then, what a change!  It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working.  Now came this shriek—­

‘Here!—­You going to set there all day?’

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness of the surprise.  As soon as I could get my voice I said, apologetically:—­’I have had no orders, sir.’

’You’ve had no orders!  My, what a fine bird we are!  We must have orders!  Our father was a gentleman—­owned slaves—­and we’ve been to school.  Yes, we are a gentleman, too, and got to have orders!  Orders, is it?  Orders is what you want!  Dod dern my skin, I’ll learn you to swell yourself up and blow around here about your dod-derned orders!  G’way from the wheel!’ (I had approached it without knowing it.)

I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses stupefied by this frantic assault.

’What you standing there for?  Take that ice-pitcher down to the texas-tender-come, move along, and don’t you be all day about it!’

The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said—­

‘Here!  What was you doing down there all this time?’

’I couldn’t find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the pantry.’

‘Derned likely story!  Fill up the stove.’

I proceeded to do so.  He watched me like a cat.  Presently he shouted—­

’Put down that shovel!  Deadest numskull I ever saw—­ain’t even got sense enough to load up a stove.’

All through the watch this sort of thing went on.  Yes, and the subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months.  As I have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread.  The moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit out some venom on me.  Preliminarily he would say—­

‘Here!  Take the wheel.’

Two minutes later—­

‘Where in the nation you going to?  Pull her down! pull her down!’

After another moment—­

‘Say!  You going to hold her all day?  Let her go—­meet her! meet her!’