I told him. After a pause -
'Where'd you get them shoes?'
I gave him the information.
'Hold up your foot!'
I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and
contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high
sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then
ejaculated, 'Well, I'll be dod derned!' and returned to his wheel.
What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing which is
still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It must have been
all of fifteen minutes - fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence -
before that long horse-face swung round upon me again - and then, what a
change! It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now
came this shriek -
'Here! - You going to set there all day?'
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness
of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,
apologetically: - 'I have had no orders, sir.'
'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have
ORDERS! Our father was a GENTLEMAN - owned slaves - and we've been to
SCHOOL. Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS,
is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to
swell yourself up and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS!
G'way from the wheel!' (I had approached it without knowing it.)
I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses
stupefied by this frantic assault.
'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to the texas-
tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!'
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said -
'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?'
'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the
pantry.'
'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.'
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he shouted -
'Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw - ain't even got
sense enough to load up a stove.'
All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the
subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months. As I
have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The moment
I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those
yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to
spit out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say -
'Here! Take the wheel.'
Two minutes later -
'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!'
After another moment -
'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go - meet her! meet her!'
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me, and meet
her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was having good times now;
for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie
had steeled for Brown the season before; consequently he knew exactly
how to entertain himself and plague me, all by the one operation.
Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would
sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of
'Snatch her! snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where
you going NOW? Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN! Don't you
hear me? Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected! I TOLD
you not to cramp that reef. G'way from the wheel!'
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was; and
sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgering was
pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub had to
take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and
criticism; and we all believed that there was a United States law making
it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty.
However, I could IMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against
that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed.
Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw
business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every
night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and
picturesque ones; - ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of
design and ghastliness of situation and environment.
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.
