Judgment is a matter of brains,
and a man must START with a good stock of that article or he will never
succeed as a pilot.
The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after
the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,' alone and under the
staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the
position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted
with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is
HIS courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out
and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man's.
He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he
is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a
sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these
cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon
the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used
to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become a good
steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,
night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did
was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of
leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any
crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I
should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the
bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as
high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said -
'I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?'
This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest
crossing in the whole river.
