Mr.Bixby served me in this fashion once,and for years afterward I used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it.
I had become a good steersman;so good,indeed,that I had all the work to do on our watch,night and day;Mr.Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me;all he ever did was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad crossings,land the boat when she needed to be landed,play gentleman of leisure nine-tenths of the watch,and collect the wages.
The lower river was about bank-full,and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction,I should have felt irreparably hurt.
The idea of being afraid of any crossing in the lot,in the DAY-TIME,was a thing too preposterous for contemplation.
Well,one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the bend above island 66,brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as high as a giraffe's,when Mr.Bixby said--'I am going below a while.I suppose you know the next crossing?'
This was almost an affront.It was about the plainest and simplest crossing in the whole river.One couldn't come to any harm,whether he ran it right or not;and as for depth,there never had been any bottom there.
I knew all this,perfectly well.
'Know how to RUN it?Why,I can run it with my eyes shut.'
'How much water is there in it?'
'Well,that is an odd question.I couldn't get bottom there with a church steeple.'
'You think so,do you?'
The very tone of the question shook my confidence.
That was what Mr.Bixby was expecting.He left,without saying anything more.I began to imagine all sorts of things.
Mr.Bixby,unknown to me,of course,sent somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the leadsmen,another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers,and then Mr.Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could observe results.Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane deck;next the chief mate appeared;then a clerk.
Every moment or two a straggler was added to my audience;and before I got to the head of the island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my nose.
I began to wonder what the trouble was.As I started across,the captain glanced aloft at me and said,with a sham uneasiness in his voice--'Where is Mr.Bixby?'
'Gone below,sir.'
But that did the business for me.My imagination began to construct dangers out of nothing,and they multiplied faster than I could keep the run of them.All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead!
The wave of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every joint in me.All my confidence in that crossing vanished.
I seized the bell-rope;dropped it,ashamed;seized it again;dropped it once more;clutched it tremblingly one again,and pulled it so feebly that I could hardly hear the stroke myself.
Captain and mate sang out instantly,and both together--'Starboard lead there!and quick about it!'
This was another shock.I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel;but I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new dangers on that side,and away I would spin to the other;only to find perils accumulating to starboard,and be crazy to get to port again.
Then came the leadsman's sepulchral cry--
'D-e-e-p four!'
Deep four in a bottomless crossing!The terror of it took my breath away.
'M-a-r-k three!...M-a-r-k three...Quarter less three!...Half twain!'
This was frightful!I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.
'Quarter twain!Quarter twain!MARK twain!'
I was helpless.I did not know what in the world to do.
I was quaking from head to foot,and I could have hung my hat on my eyes,they stuck out so far.
'Quarter LESS twain!Nine and a HALF!'
We were DRAWING nine!My hands were in a nerveless flutter.
I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them.I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer--'Oh,Ben,if you love me,BACK her!Quick,Ben!Oh,back the immortal SOUL out of her!'
I heard the door close gently.I looked around,and there stood Mr.Bixby,smiling a bland,sweet smile.Then the audience on the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter.
I saw it all,now,and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history.I laid in the lead,set the boat in her marks,came ahead on the engines,and said--'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan,WASN'T it?
I suppose I'll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the head of 66.'
'Well,no,you won't,maybe.In fact I hope you won't;for I want you to learn something by that experience.
Didn't you KNOW there was no bottom in that crossing?'
'Yes,sir,I did.'
'Very well,then.You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody else to shake your confidence in that knowledge.Try to remember that.
And another thing:when you get into a dangerous place,don't turn coward.
That isn't going to help matters any.'
It was a good enough lesson,but pretty hardly learned.
Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for.
It was,'Oh,Ben,if you love me,back her!'
