hich it was the ambition of every boy along the river some
day to occupy. This was a great square box, walled in mainly with glass.
Square across the front of it rose the huge wheel, eight feet in diameter,
sometimes half-sunken beneath the floor, so that the pilot, in moments of
stress, might not only grip it with his hands, but stand on its spokes, as
well. Easy chairs and a long bench made up the furniture of this sacred
apartment. In front of it rose the two towering iron chimneys, joined,
near the top by an iron grating that usually carried some gaudily colored
or gilded device indicative of the line to which the boat belonged.
Amidships, and aft of the pilot-house, rose the two escape pipes, from
which the hoarse, prolonged s-o-o-ugh of the high pressure exhaust burst
at half-minute intervals, carrying to listeners miles away, the news that
a boat was coming.

All this edifice above the hull of the boat, was of the flimsiest
construction, built of pine scantling, liberally decorated with scroll-saw
work, and lavishly covered with paint mixed with linseed oil. Beneath it
were two, four, or six roaring furnaces fed with rich pitch-pine, and open
on every side to drafts and gusts. From the top of the great chimneys
poured volcanic showers of sparks, deluging the inflammable pile with a
fiery rain. The marvel is not that every year saw its quotum of steamers
burned to the water's edge, but, rather, that the quota were
proportionately so small.

At midnight this apparent inflammability was even more striking. Lights
shone from the windows of the long row of cabins, and wherever there was a
chink, or a bit of glass, or a latticed blind, the radiance streamed
forth as though within were a great mass of fire, struggling, in every
way, to escape. Below, the boiler deck was dully illumined by smoky
lanterns; but when one of the great doors of the roaring furnace was
thrown open, that the half-naked black firemen might throw in more
pitch-pine slabs, there shone forth such a fiery glare, that the boat and
the machinery--working in the open, and plain to view--seemed wrapped in a
Vesuvius of flame, and the sturdy stokers and lounging roustabouts looked
like the fiends in a fiery inferno. The danger was not merely apparent,
but very real. During the early days of steamboating, fires and boiler
explosions were of frequent occurrence. A river boat, once ablaze, could
never be saved, and the one hope for the passengers was that i