The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-03-20

bends, and curious incarnate mass of lum-
Der It was, too. However, inssmuch as /
could shut my eyes and reel off good
long string of these names without leaving
out more than ten miles of river in every
fifty, began to feel that could take
boat down to New Orleans il | could make
her skip those little gaps. But of course
my complacency could hardly get start
enough to lift my nose trifle In the air,
before Mr.. b would think of some
thing to fetch it down again. One day he
turned on me suddenly with this settler:
"What is the shape of Walnut Bend ?"
He might as well have asked me my
grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. |
reflected respectfully, and then said didn't
know il had any particular shape. My
gunpowder chief went off with bang, of
course, and then he went on loading and
firing until he was out of adjectyes.
had learned long ago that he only car
red Just so many rounds of ammunition,
and was sure to subside into very plaza
BILE and even remorseful old smooth-bore as
soon as they were all gone. That word
''old' is merely affectionate, he was not
more than thirty-four. waited. By and
by he said
"My boy, you've got to know the shape
of the river perfectly. 1t is all there is
left to steer by on dark night. Every
thing else is blotted out and gone. But
mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the
night that it has in the daytime"
''How on earth am ever going to learn
it, then ?"
How do you follow hall at home in
the dark Because you know the shape
of it. You can't see it."
''Do you mean to soy that I've got to
know all the million trifling variations of
shape in the banks of this interminable
river rs well as / know the shape of The
front hall at home ?"
son my honor you've got to know them
better than any man ever did know the
shapes of the halls in his own house."
II wish was dead"
.'Now don't want to discourage you.
but
'Weil, pile it on me; l might as well
have it now as another time"
You see, this has got to be learned /;
there isn't any getting around it. A clear
starlight night throws such heavy shadows
that if you didn't know the shape of the
shore perfectly you would claw away from
every bunch of timber, because you would
take the black shadow of it for solid
cape and you see you would be getting
scared to death every fifteen minutes by
the watch. You would be fifty yards from
the shore all the times when you ought to
be within twenty feet of it You can't see
snag in one of those shadows, but you
know exactly where it is and the shape of
the river tells you when you are coming to
it, Then there's your pitch dark nights (;
the river is very different shape on a
pitch dark night from what it is on star
light night. All shores seem to be straight
lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too and
you'd run them for straight lines, only you
know better. Ysu boldly drive your boat
right into what seems to be solid, straight
wal--you knowing very well that in re-
atty there is curve there--and that wall
falls back and makes way for you. Then
there's your gray mist. You take night
when there's one of these grisly, drizzly,
gray mists, and then there isn't any partic-
uar shape to shore. A gray mist would
lived. Well then, different kinds of moon
light change the shape of the river in diff
ierent ways. You see"-
sob, don't say any more, please. Have
got to learn the shape of the river accord
ing to all these five hundred thousand diff
ferent ways ? If / tried to carry all that
cargo in my head it would make me stoop-
shouldered."
''No you only learn the shape of the
river and you learn it with such absolute
certainty that you can always steer by the
shape that's in your head, and never mind
the one that's before your eyes"
Every well, I'll try it but after / have
learned it can depend on it? Will it keep
the same form and not go fooling around p
Before Mr.. B could answer, Mr.
in IN folra tba oh nj
he said
OBJ, you'll have to look out for
Presidents island and all that country clear
away up above the old hen and chickens.
The banks are caving and the shape of the
shores are changing like every thing Why
you wouldn't know the point above 40.
You can go up inside the old sycamore
snag, now"
So that question was answered. Here
were leagues of shore changing shape. My
spirits were down in the mud again. Two
things seemed pretty apparent to me. One
was, that in order to be pilot man had
got to learn more than any one man ought
TO be allowed to know and the other was
that he must learn it all over again in diff
ferent way every twenty-four hours.
| went to work now to learn the shape
Of the river; and of all the GLIDING and
ungraspable objects that ever tried to get
mind or hands on that was the chief.
would fasten my eyes upon sharp, wood
ed point that projected far into the river
some miles ahead of me, and go to labo.
riously photographing its shape upon my
brain and just as l was beginning to sue
coed to my satisfaction we would draw W
toward it, and the exasperating thing would
begin to melt away and fold back into the
bank! If there had been conspicuous
dead tree standing upon the very point o.
the cape, would find that tree inconspic
uously merged into the general forest, ant
occupying the middle of straight shore
when got abreast of il No prominent nil
would stick to its shape long enough for mt
10 make up my mind what its form really
was, but it was as dssolving and changetu
as if it had been mountain of butter in thu
hottest corner of the trophies. Nothing
ever had the same shape when / was com
ing down stream that it had borne when
went up. i mentioned these little Difficult
ties to Mr.. b. He said
"Thats the very main virtue of the thing
If the shapes didn't change every thre
seconds they wouldn't be of any use. TAKE
this place where we are now, for instance
AS long as that hill over yonder is onl,
one hill / can boom right alon
the way I'm going; but the momen
1t splits at the top and form, 9
V, know I've got to scratch to starboar,
in hurry, or I'll bang this boats brain
out against rock; and then the momen
one of the prongs of the V swings behind tn
other, I've got to waltz to larboard again
or I'll have misunderstanding with a sna
that would snatch the keelson out of th
steamboat as neatly as if it were silver il
your hand. If that hill didn't change i,
shape on bad nights there would be a
awful steamboat graveyard around here in
side of year"
1t was plain that had got to learn tn
shape of the river in all the different way
that could be thought of,-upsde dowr
wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-af
and "thortships, and then know what t
do on gray nights when it hadn't any shap