Date and locality
and branched out into a narrative that bristled all along with
incredible adventures; a narrative that was so reeking with bloodshed
and so crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and
unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying,
shuddering, wondering, worshipping.
It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he was a low, vulgar,
ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug, an untraveled native of the
wilds of Illinois, who had absorbed wildcat literature and appropriated
its marvels, until in time he had woven odds and ends of the mess into
this yarn, and then gone on telling it to fledglings like me, until he
had come to believe it himself.
Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience
WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other
delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making
the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get
acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the
boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever
for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage - more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive.
