He WAS the most
scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb
says, "like master, like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man,
you'll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He
paid first-class wages; but said I, What's wages when your reputation's
in danger? So I let the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've
never regretted it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the
way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the
world - all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where
they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so that it made
his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it
wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be
nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of
drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot
was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten.
That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of
him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out
of him, and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and
the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her
amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to
do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone.
You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer
her than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina
election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made,
they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it;
I backed her out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river
all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four
horribly crooked crossings - '
'Without any rudder?'
'Yes - old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me
for running such a dark night - '
'Such a DARK NIGHT ? - Why, you said - '
'Never mind what I said, - 'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon
the moon began to rise, and - '
'You mean the SUN - because you started out just at break of - look here!
Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or - '
'It was before - oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he - '
'But was this the trip she sunk, or was - '
'Oh, no! - months afterward. And so the old man, he - '
'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said - '
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and
said -
'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while - you're
handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a stranger and an
innocent! - why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words; and I made
up my mind to find out what was your little game. It was to DRAW ME OUT.
Well, I let you, didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and
next time play fair, and you won't have to work your passage.'
Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out from St.
Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I had been itching to
get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to have
forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to steer a steamboat,
nor how to enjoy it, either.
Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman
THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo - two hundred miles - is varied and
beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,
and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing
between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze
and sunshine, and our boat threw the miles out behind her with
satisfactory despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a
penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At Grand Tower, too,
there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets
its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the
water on the Missouri side of the river - a piece of nature's fanciful
handiwork - and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of
that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil's
Bake Oven - so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble
anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table - this latter a great
smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched
some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for
anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's
Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his
which I cannot now call to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in
old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new
coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old
coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had
been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its
best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-
wash on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality,
than anywhere in the West; and added - 'On a dairy farm you never can get
any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;
and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In
my own experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that
people who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was
plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make
lime run more to religion than whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further,
that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place.
