han, WASN'T it? I suppose I'll
never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the
head of 66.'

'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you won't; for I want you to
learn something by that experience. Didn't you KNOW there was no bottom
in that crossing?'

'Yes, sir, I did.'

'Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody else to shake
your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And another
thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward. That
isn't going to help matters any.'

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the
hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 'Oh, Ben, if
you love me, back her!'

Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae of the
science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step to a comprehension
of what the science consists of; and at the same time I have tried to
show him that it is a very curious and wonderful science, too, and very
worthy of his attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no
surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I have
followed since, and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is
plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely
independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the
hampered servants of parliament and people; parliaments sit in chains
forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be
independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and
patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; no
clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth, regardless of
his parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the
public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we
print. In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and worries
and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the Mississippi pilot
had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp
of a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders while the
vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reign was over.
The moment that the boat was under way in the river, she was under the
sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could do with her exactly