Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0136/01369.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 14KB | 256 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01369}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life On The Mississippi
Chapter IX}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{water
reef
like
never
now
boat
away
river
bixby
bluff}
$Date{1917}
$Log{}
Title:       Life On The Mississippi
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1917

Chapter IX

Continued Perplexities

     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?"

     "Yes, sir."

     "Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef.  You can climb
over there, and not hurt anything.  Cross over, now, and follow along close
under the reef - easy water there - not much current."

     I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end.  Then Mr.
Bixby said:

     "Now get ready.  Wait till I give the word.  She won't want to mount the
reef; a boat hates shoal water.  Stand by - wait - wait - keep her well in
hand.  Now cramp her down!  Snatch her!  snatch her!"

     He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it around until
it was hard down, and then we held it so.  The boat resisted, and refused to
answer for a while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted the reef,
and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming away from her bows.

     "Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When
she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of
way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night that the
water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little, toward the
point.  You are well up on the bar now; there is a bar under every point,
because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy and allows the
sediment to sink.  Do you see those fine lines on the face of the water that
branch out like the ribs of a fan?  Well, those are little reefs; you want to
just miss the ends of them, but run them pretty close.  Now look out - look
out!  Don't you crowd that slick, greasy- looking place; there ain't nine feet
there; she won't stand it.  She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you!
Oh, blazes, there you go! Stop the starboard wheel!  Quick!  Ship up to back!
Set her back!"

     The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly, shooting
white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape-pipes, but it was too late.
The boat had "smelt" the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges that radiated
from her bows suddenly disappeared, a great dead swell came rolling forward,
and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to larboard, and went tearing
away toward the shore as if she were about scared to death.  We were a good
mile from where we ought to have been when we finally got the upper hand of
her again.

     During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I knew how
to run the next few miles.  I said:

     "Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one, start
out from the lower end of Higgins's woodyard, make a square crossing, and - "

     "That's all right.  I'll be back before you close up on the next point."

     But he wasn't.  He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon a
piece of the river which I had some misgivings about.  I did not know that he
was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform.  I went gaily along,
getting prouder and prouder, for he had never left the boat in my sole charge
such a length of time before.  I even got to "setting" her and letting the
wheel go entirely, while I vaingloriously turned my back and inspected the
stern marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy indifference which I had
prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great pilots.  Once I inspected rather
long, and when I faced to the front again my heart flew into my mouth so
suddenly that if I hadn't clapped my teeth together I should have lost it.
One of those frightful bluff reefs was stretching its deadly length right
across our bows!  My head was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I
stood on; I gasped and could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with
such rapidity that it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat
answered and turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her!  I
fled, but still it followed, still it kept - right across my bows!  I never
looked to see where I was going, I only fled.  The awful crash was imminent.
Why didn't that villain come?  If I committed the crime of ringing a bell I
might get thrown overboard.  But better that than kill the boat.  So in blind
desperation, I started such a rattling "shivaree" down below as never had
astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy.  Amidst the frenzy of the
bells the engines began to back and fill in a curious way, and my reason
forsook its throne - we were about to crash into the woods on the other side
of the river.  Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view on the
hurricane-deck.  My soul went out to him in gratitude. My distress vanished; I
would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara with Mr. Bixby on the
hurricane-deck.  He blandly and sweetly took his toothpick out of his mouth
between his fingers, as if it were a cigar - we were just in the act of
climbing an overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scudding astern like
rats - and lifted up these commands to me ever so gently:

     "Stop the starboard!  Stop the larboard!  Set her back on both!"

     The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical
instant, then reluctantly began to back away.

     "Stop the larboard!  Come ahead on it!  Stop the starboard!  Come ahead
on it!  Point her for the bar!"

     I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning.  Mr. Bixby came in and
said, with mock simplicity:

     "When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times
before you land, so that the engineers can get ready."

     I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.

     "Ah!  Then it was for wood, I suppose.  The officer of the watch will
tell you when he wants to wood up."

     I went on consuming, and said I wasn't after wood.

     "Indeed?  Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then?  Did you
ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the river?"

     "No, sir - and I wasn't trying to follow it.  I was getting away from a
bluff reef."

     "No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where
you were."

     "But I saw it.  It was as bluff as that one yonder."

     "Just about.  Run over it!"

     "Do you give it as an order?"

     "Yes.  Run over it!"

     "If I don't, I wish I may die."

     "All right; I am taking the responsibility."

     I was just as anxious to kill the boat, now, as I had been to save it
before.  I impressed my orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and
made a straight break for the reef.  As it disappeared under our bows I held
my breath; but we slid over it like oil.

     "Now, don't you see the difference?  It wasn't anything but a wind reef.
The wind does that."

     "So I see.  But it is exactly like a bluff reef.  How am I ever going to
tell them apart?"

     "I can't tell you.  It is an instinct.  By and by you will just naturally
know one from the other, but you never will be able to explain why or how you
know them apart."

     It turned out to be true.  The face of the water, in time, became a
wonderful book - a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger,
but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished
secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book
to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void
of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one
that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some
other thing.  There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one
whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with
every reperusal.  The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a
peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he
did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an italicized
passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest
capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation-points at the end of it, for
it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out
of the strongest vessel that ever floated.  It is the faintest and simplest
expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye.  In
truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner
of pretty pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas
to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most
dead-earnest of reading-matter.

     Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know
every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew
the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost
something, too.  I had lost something which could never be restored to me
while I lived.  All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the
majestic river!  I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I
witnessed when steamboating was new to me.  A broad expanse of the river was
turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold,
through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one
place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the
surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an
opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered
with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the
shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from
this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like
silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a
single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that
was flowing from the sun.  There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody
heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the
dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every passing moment with new
marvels of coloring.

     I stood like one bewitched.  I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The
world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I
have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the
charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's
face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them.  Then, if that
sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture,
and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: "This sun
means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that
the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water
refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of
these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils'
show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is
shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the
'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he
could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single
living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to
get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?"

     No, the romance and beauty were all gone from the river.  All the value
any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish
toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.  Since those days, I have
pitied doctors from my heart.  What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek
mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease?  Are
not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and
symbols of hidden decay?  Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he
simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all
to himself?  And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or
lost most by learning his trade?