It Was
Nothing; I Could Have Done It Easy Enough, And I Said So; But Everybody
Went On Just The Same, Making A Wonderful To Do Over That Ass, As If He
Had Done Something Great.
That girl couldn't seem to have enough of
that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed
her, any way.
The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the buoy-
light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell away
and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a
hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the steamer's course,
headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some
time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged
that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but
supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went on with his
talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on him, but
that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely,
for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off,
until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was trying to
run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he sang out,
'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant the jump
was made.
Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs
BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make
plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the
peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there is
one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has
brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is
so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'
sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if
he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the
vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous
thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of
river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest
street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features
patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post
and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you
can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at
random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will
then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a
pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And
then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the
character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying
depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea
of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out
of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long
street, and CHANGE THEIR PLACES once a month, and still manage to know
their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these
repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what
is required of a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.
I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world.
To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them
glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and
recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant
mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's
massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the
handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am
not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too
strong, but pilots will not.
And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how
placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast
stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single
valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry,
'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until it
become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be
going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking,
and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of
this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be
interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again,
just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with
precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was
uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and side-
marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat there and
put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter twain' did
not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties
instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid
up the important details for future reference without requiring any
assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talking with
a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a monotonous
repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the
midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave
the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or three weeks
afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects
you were passing at the moment it was done.
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