An hour before sunset Mr. Bixby took the wheel, and Mr. W. stepped aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a doomful sigh: "Well, yonder's Hat Island - and we can't make it." All the watches closed with a snap. Everybody sighed and muttered something about its being "too bad, too bad - ah, if we could only have got here half an hour sooner!" and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment. Some started to go out but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The sun dipped behind the horizon; the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the doorknob and had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration - but no words. Insensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause, and one more note was struck. The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck: "Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!" The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck. "M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less-three! Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain! Quarter-less-" Mr. Bixby pulled two bell ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far below in the engine-room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to whistle through the gauge cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on and it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible marks for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea- he would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent sentence now and then - such as: "There; she's over the first reef all right!" After a pause, another subdued voice: "Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!" "Now, she's in the marks; over she goes!" Somebody else muttered: "Oh, it was done beautiful - beautiful!" Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work; it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island. We were closing right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the strongest impulse to do something, anything, to save the vessel. But still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back. "She'll not make it!" somebody whispered. The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries, till it was down to : “Eight-and-a-half! E-i-g-h-t feet! E-i-g-h-t feet! Seven Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer: "Stand by, now!" "Ay, ay, sir!" "Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and-" We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing, shouted through the tube, “Now, let her have it — every ounce you've got!" Then to his partner, "Put her hard down! Snatch her! Snatch her!" The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apex of disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went! And such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a pilot house before! There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night; and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talked about by river men. Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying the great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one • should know that not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steamboat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the bargain. The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said: "By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!" One of the books which would make Mark Twain famous if he had written nothing else is Life on the Mississippi. It is a story of the middle of the nineteenth century when the great river was picturesque with the steamboats which plied between New Orleans and the cities of the upper Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers. These boats are almost all gone now because the railroad has become such a rapid and efficient means for travel and for shipment of freight. Nowhere else can one get so good a picture of the early life on the river as in Mark Twain's writings. The two selections here given are chapters six and seven of the Life on the Mississippi. The author is relating his own experiences, for he was for several years a licensed pilot directing and handling some of the largest boats on the river. In order to appreciate properly the story, you should learn exactly what the business of a pilot is. The "Cub," as he calls himself, was about twenty years old at the time he began to "learn the river." The leadsmen took soundings by lowering into the water a line on which were placed bits of leather or colored bunting as marks, about a fathom apart. Depth of water is measured by fathoms, one fathom being six feet long. When a leadsman reported mark twain, he meant that the water was 2 fathoms (marked second on his sounding line). Quarter twain means 2 fathoms. I. Do you think the "Cub" was as stupid as he pretends to have been? 2. Make a list of the kinds of facts that the "cub pilot" learned on his first trip. How many miles of river would he need to learn? 3. Can you guess what his expedition to the Amazon was to be (p. 386)? 4. What were Mr. Bixby's chief qualities? Were they all admirable ones? 5. Note the author's description of the big boat. Can you see it in imagination? What are the chief marks of her splendor? 6. What made the pilots welcome as passengers on the big boat? 7. What peculiar habits of the river made it necessary for the pilots to go downstream frequently? 8. Who seems master of the ship, the pilot or the captain? Why was this so? 9. Why was Mr. Bixby's feat regarded so highly? 10. The author, Samuel L. Clemens, is much better known by his pen name than his real name. What do you think of his choice of this name for signing his books? Where did he find it? NOTEBOOK Measure the difficulty of each selection in this section on LITERATURE OF TRADITION AND HISTORY (pages 325-401) after the manner described on page 205. COLUMBUS1 JOAQUIN MILLER BEHIND him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; The good mate said: "Now must we pray, Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?" "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak.” If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 'Sail on! sail on ! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say". He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" 1 Reprinted by permission of the Harr Wagner Publishing Company, publishers of Joaquin Miller's complete works. |