ts anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I
told you.'

I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.

'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'

'I--I--don't know.'

'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO
you know?'

'I--I--nothing, for certain.'

'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.'

Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from
one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would
boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.

'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?'

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation
provoked me to say:--

'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who
would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such
an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and
farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted
his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the
window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and
not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said
to me in the gentlest way--

'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a
pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know
it just like A B C.'

That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged
long. I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless
Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few
strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was
as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was
not entirely cer