Life on The Mississippi (22 page)

Brown was
always
watching for a pretext to find fault; and if he could find no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would scold you for shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for “pulling down” when not invited, and for
not
pulling down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and for waiting
for
orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with
everything
you did; and another invariable rule of his was to throw all his remarks (to you) into the form of an insult.

One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden. Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other, standing by to “pull down” or “shove up.” He cast a furtive glance at me every now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he was trying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going to take. By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual snarly way:

“Here! See if you’ve got gumption enough to round her to.”

This was simply
bound
to be a success; nothing could prevent it; for he had never allowed me to round the boat to before; consequently, no matter how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with it. He stood back there with his greedy eye on me, and the result was what might have been forseen: I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and didn’t know what I was about; I started too early to bring the boat around, but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown’s eye, and corrected my mistake; I started around once more while too high up, but corrected myself again in time; I made other false moves, and still managed to save myself; but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I tumbled into the very worst blunder of all—I got too far
down
before beginning to fetch the boat around. Brown’s chance was come.

His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled me across the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel down, and began to pour out a stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he was out of breath. In the course of this speech he called me all the different kinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice I thought he was even going to swear—but he had never done that, and he didn’t this time. “Dod-dern” was the nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone.

That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience on the hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night, I killed Brown in seventeen different ways—all of them new.

Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering; I was “pulling down.” My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck and shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below. Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that was his way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk. The wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretended he wasn’t), and I very much doubted if he had heard the order. If I had had two heads, I would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemed judicious to take care of it; so I kept still.

Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation. Captain Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said:

“Let her come around, sir, let her come around. Didn’t Henry tell you to land here?”

“
No
, sir!”

“I sent him up to do it.”

“He
did
come up; and that’s all the good it done, the dod-derned fool. He never said anything.”

“Didn’t
you
hear him?” asked the captain of me.

Of course I didn’t want to be mixed up in this business, but there was no way to avoid it; so I said:

“Yes, sir.”

I knew what Brown’s next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was:

“Shut your mouth! You never heard anything of the kind.”

I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later, Henry entered the pilothouse, unaware of what had been going on. He was a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I knew Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began, straightway:

“Here! Why didn’t you tell me we’d got to land at that plantation?”

“I did tell you, Mr. Brown.”

“It’s a lie!”

I said:

“You lie, yourself. He did tell you.”

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me:

“I’ll attend to your case in a half a minute!” then to Henry, “And you leave the pilothouse; out with you!”

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool, and I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched him out.

I had committed the crime of crimes—I had lifted my hand against a pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and couldn’t be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long account with this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with my fists a considerable time—I do not know how long, the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was; but in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody at the helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-f stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was only luck—a body
might
have found her charging into the woods.

Perceiving, at a glance, that the
Pennsylvania
was in no danger, Brown gathered up the big spyglass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of the pilothouse with more than Comanche bluster. But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English, calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted. He could have done his part to admiration in a crossfire of mere vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species of controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel, muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench. The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I saw the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd. I said to myself, “Now I
am
done for!”—for although, as a rule, he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the boat’s family, and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it.

I tried to imagine what he
would
do to a cub pilot who had been guilty of such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly freight and alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I thought I would go and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide ashore. So I slipped out of the pilothouse, and down the steps, and around to the texas door—and was in the act of gliding within when the captain confronted me! I dropped my head, and he stood over me in silence a moment or two, then said impressively—

“Follow me.”

I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forward end of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down; I stood before him. He looked at me some little time, then said—

“So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?”

I answered meekly:

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know that that is a very serious matter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully five minutes with no one at the wheel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you strike him first?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What with?”

“A stool, sir.”

“Hard?”

“Middling, sir.”

“Did it knock him down?”

“He—he fell, sir.”

“Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you do?”

“Pounded him, sir.”

“Pounded him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you pound him much? That is, severely?”

“One might call it that, sir, maybe.”

“I’m deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that. You have been guilty of a great crime; and don’t you ever be guilty of it again, on this boat.
But
—lay for him ashore! Give him a good sound thrashing, do you hear? I’ll pay the expenses. Now go—and mind you, not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you! You’ve been guilty of a great crime, you whelp!”

I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat thighs after I had closed his door.

When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain who was talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded that I be put ashore in New Orleans—and added:

“I’ll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.”

The captain said:

“But he needn’t come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.”

“I won’t even stay on the same boat with him.
One
of us has to go ashore.”

“Very well,” said the captain, “let it be yourself,” and resumed his talk with the passengers.

During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings, I listened to George Ealer’s flute; or to his readings from his two bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him—and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move and ran the game out differently.

We lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight watch and leave the night watches to George Ealer. But I was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other. Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel with me. So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the
A. T. Lacey
for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a new pilot there and my steersman’s berth could then be resumed. The
Lacey
was to leave a couple of days after the
Pennsylvania
.

The night before the
Pennsylvania
left, Henry and I sat chatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight. The subject of the chat, mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before—steamboat disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as we suspected it; the water which was to make the steam which should cause it was washing past some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked; but it would arrive at the right time and the right place. We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they might be of
some
use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at least stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance might throw in the way. Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came, and acted accordingly.

The
Lacey
started up the river two days behind the
Pennsylvania
. We touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out, and somebody shouted:

“The
Pennsylvania
is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred and fifty lives lost!”

At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra, issued by a Memphis paper, which gave some particulars. It mentioned my brother, and said he was not hurt.

Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother was again mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help. We did not get full details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the sorrowful story:

It was six o’clock on a hot summer morning. The
Pennsylvania
was creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below Memphis on a half-head of steam, towing a wood flat which was fast being emptied. George Ealer was in the pilothouse—alone, I think; the second engineer and a striker had the watch in the engine room; the second mate had the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, and one striker; Capt. Klinefelter was in the barber’s chair, and the barber was preparing to shave him. There were a good many cabin passengers aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers—so it was said at the time—and not very many of them were astir. The wood being nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to “come ahead” full steam, and the next moment four of the eight boilers exploded with a thunderous crash, and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward the sky! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish—and then, after a little, fire broke out.

Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the river; among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter. The carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struck the water seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot, and George Black, chief clerk, were never seen or heard of after the explosion. The barber’s chair, with Captain Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with its back overhanging vacancy—everything forward of it, floor and all, had disappeared; and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood with one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather unconsciously, and saying not a word.