Well,
when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock, over
sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.' [This
with a sigh.]
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing,
in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slanting aloft
on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance, he indifferently
drew attention to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome through
familiarity, and observed that it was an 'alligator boat.'
'An alligator boat? What's it for?'
'To dredge out alligators with.'
'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'
'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But they used to
be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places, here and there, where the
river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so on -
places they call alligator beds.'
'Did they actually impede navigation?'
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that
we didn't get aground on alligators.'
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.
However, I restrained myself and said -
'It must have been dreadful.'
'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It was so hard
to tell anything about the water; the damned things shift around so -
never lie still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef,
straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a break; you can tell a
sand-reef - that's all easy; but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth
anything. Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; and when
you do see where it is, like as not it ain't there when YOU get there,
the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there were some
few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they
could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it
wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me
see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and
Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon,
and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood - all A 1 alligator
pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian
could tell whiskey. Read it? - Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I
had as many dollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half
off. Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could
always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had to
lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for alligators;
they never laid up for anything but fog. They could SMELL the best
alligator water it was said; I don't know whether it was so or not, and
I think a body's got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he
knows himself, without going around backing up other people's say-so's,
though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it, as long as
they can roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style
of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom - maybe quarter-LESS.'
[My! Was this Rob Styles? - This mustached and stately figure?-A slim
enough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in five-and-
twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these
musings, I said aloud -
'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much
good, because they could come back again right away.'
'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn't
talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED. It's
the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie. If there's one
thing that an alligator is more down on than another, it's being
dredged. Besides, they were not simply shoved out of the way; the most
of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold;
and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the
Government works.'
'What for?'
'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the Government shoes
are made of alligator hide. It makes the best shoes in the world. They
last five years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is
a Government monopoly. All the alligators are Government property - just
like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you
fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of
treason - lucky duck if they don't hang you, too. And they will, if
you're a Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you
can't touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and
you've got to let him alone.'
'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'
'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'
'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'
'Just for police duty - nothing more. They merely go up and down now and
then. The present generation of alligators know them as easy as a
burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they break camp and
go for the woods.'
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator
business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein,
and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of
his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain
extraordinary performance of his chief favorite among this distinguished
fleet - and then adding -
'That boat was the "Cyclone," - last trip she ever made - she sunk, that
very trip - captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I
struck.
