Life on The Mississippi (7 page)

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Authors: Mark Twain

BOOK: Life on The Mississippi
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“But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the stabboard side. There warn’t no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn; nobody talked; you couldn’t get anybody to do anything but set around moody and look at the bar’l. It begun to cloud up again. When the watch changed, the off watch stayed up, ’stead of turning in. The storm ripped and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar’l left toward day, and nobody see it go.
“Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don’t mean the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone—not that. They was quiet, but they all drunk more than usual—not together—but each man sidled off and took it private, by himself.
“After dark the off watch didn’t turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked; the boys didn’t scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar’l again. She took up her old place. She stayed there all night; nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar’l jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to man the after-sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go—no more sprained ankles for them, they said. They wouldn’t even
walk
aft. Well then, just then the sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of the after watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, says you? Why,
sprained their ankles!
“The bar’l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, toward dawn. Well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talked low together. But none of them herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake. If he come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away. They wouldn’t man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn’t let the dead men be took ashore to be planted; he didn’t believe a man that got ashore would come back; and he was right.
“After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be trouble if that bar’l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he’d seen the bar’l on other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore. Some said, let’s all go ashore in a pile, if the bar’l comes again.
“This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched together forrard watching for the bar’l, when, lo and behold you, here she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain, and says:
“ ‘Boys, don’t be a pack of children and fools; I don’t want this bar’l to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and
you
don’t; well, then, how’s the best way to stop it? Burn it up—that’s the way. I’m going to fetch it aboard,’ he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he went.
“He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick Allbright’s baby; he owned up and said so.
“ ‘Yes,’ he says, a-leaning over it, ‘yes, it is my own lamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,’ says he—for he could curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres. Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it—which was prob’ly a lie—and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar’l, before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar’l had chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar’l didn’t come any more after that. He said if the men would stand it one more night—and was a-going on like that—but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.”
“
Who
was shedding tears?” says Bob; “was it Allbright or the baby?”
“Why, Allbright, of course; didn’t I tell you the baby was dead? Been dead three years—how could it cry?”
“Well, never mind how it could cry—how could it
keep
all that time?” says Davy. “You answer me that.”
“I don’t know how it done it,” says Ed. “It done it though—that’s all I know about it.”
“Say—what did they do with the bar’l?” says the Child of Calamity.
“Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.”
“Edward, did the child look like it was choked?” says one.
“Did it have its hair parted?” says another.
“What was the brand on that bar’l, Eddy?” says a fellow they called Bill.
“Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?” says Jimmy.
“Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning?” says Davy.
“Him? Oh, no, he was both of ’em,” says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.
“Say, Edward, don’t you reckon you’d better take a pill? You look bad—don’t you feel pale?” says the Child of Calamity.
“Oh, come, now, Eddy,” says Jimmy, “show up; you must a kept part of that bar’l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole—
do
—and we’ll all believe you.”
“Say, boys,” says Bill, “le’s divide it up. Thar’s thirteen of us. I can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.”
Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear them a mile.
“Boys, we’ll split a watermelon on that,” says the Child of Calamity; and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so he says “Ouch!” and jumped back.
“Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys—there’s a snake here as big as a cow!”
So they ran there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.
“Come out of that, you beggar!” says one.
“Who are you?” says another.
“What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.”
“Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.”
I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says:
“A cussed thief! Lend a hand and le’s heave him overboard!”
“No,” says Big Bob, “le’s get out the paint pot and paint him a sky blue all over from head to heel, and
then
heave him over!”
“Good! That’s it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.”
When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he says:
“ ’Vast there! He’s nothing but a cub. I’ll paint the man that tetches him!”
So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn’t take it up.
“Come here to the fire, and le’s see what you’re up to here,” says Davy. “Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you been aboard here?”
“Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,” says I.
“How did you get dry so quick?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m always that way, mostly.”
“Oh, you are, are you? What’s your name?”
I warn’t going to tell my name. I didn’t know what to say, so I just says:
“Charles William Allbright, sir.”
Then they roared—the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that, because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.
When they got done laughing, Davy says:
“It won’t hardly do, Charles William. You couldn’t have growed this much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar’l, you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody’ll hurt you, if you ain’t up to anything wrong. What
is
your name?”
“Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.”
“Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?”
“From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him——”
“Oh, come!”
“Yes, sir, it’s as true as the world; Pap he says——”
“Oh, your grandmother!”
They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and stopped me.
“Now, looky here,” says Davy; “you’re scared, and so you talk wild. Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?”
“Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But I warn’t born in her. It’s our first trip.”
“Now you’re talking! What did you come aboard here for? To steal?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.—It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys does that.”
“Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?”
“Sometimes they drive the boys off.”
“So they do. They might steal. Looky here; if we let you off this time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?”
“ ’Deed I will, boss. You try me.”
“All right, then. You ain’t but little ways from shore. Overboard with you, and don’t you make a fool of yourself another time this way. Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!”
I didn’t wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore. When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home again.
 
The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire to offer in this place.
I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination—the marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.
CHAPTER IV
The Boys’ Ambition
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village
2
on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient.
When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first Negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep—with shingle shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles scattered about the “levee”; a pile of “skids” on the slope of the stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the other side; the “point” above the town, and the “point” below, bounding the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote “points”; instantly a Negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, “S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin’ !” and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time. And the boat
is
rather a handsome sight, too. She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilothouse, all glass and “gingerbread,” perched on top of the “texas” deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat’s name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys—a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deck hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge cocks; the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn, back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.

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