Sometimes, in deep water, Mr. Pepper actually permitted Magnolia to turn the great pilot wheel that measured twice as high as she. He stood beside her, of course; or her father, if he chanced to be present, stood behind her. It was thrilling, too, when her father took the wheel in an exciting place—where the water was very shoal, perhaps; or where the steamer found a stiff current pushing behind her, and the tricky dusk coming on. At first it puzzled Magnolia that her father, omnipotent in all other parts of the Creole Belle, should defer to this stripling; should actually be obliged, on his own steamer, to ask permission of the pilot to take the wheel. They were both beautifully formal and polite about it.
“What say to my taking her a little spell, Mr. Pepper?”
“Not at all, Captain Hawks. Not at all, sir,” Mr. Pepper would reply, cordially if ambiguously. His gesture as he stepped aside and relinquished the wheel was that of one craftsman who recognizes and respects the ability of another. Andy Hawks had been a crack Mississippi River pilot in his day. And then to watch Captain Andy skinning the wheel—climbing it round and round, hands and feet, and looking for all the world like a talented little monkey.
Magnolia even learned to distinguish the bells by tone. There was the Go Ahead, soprano-voiced. Mr. Pepper called it the Jingle. He explained to Magnolia:
“When I give the engineer the Jingle, why, he knows I mean for him to give her all she’s got.” Strangely enough, the child, accustomed to the sex of boats and with an uncannily quick comprehension of river jargon, understood him, nodded her head so briskly that the hand-made curls jerked up and down like bell-ropes. “Sometimes it’s called the Soprano. Then the Centre Bell—the Stopping Bell—that’s middle tone. About alto. This here, that’s the Astern Bell—the backup bell. That’s bass. The Boom-Boom, you call it. Here’s how you can remember them: The Jingle, the Alto, and the Boom-Boom.”
A charming medium through which to know the river, Mr. Pepper. An enchanting place from which to view the river, that pilot house. Magnolia loved its shining orderliness, disorderly little creature that she was. The wilderness of water and woodland outside made its glass-enclosed cosiness seem the snugger. Oilcloth on the floor. You opened the drawer of the little table and there lay Mr. Pepper’s pistol, glittering and sinister; and Mr. Pepper’s Pilot Rules. Magnolia lingered over the title printed on the brick-coloured paper binding:
PILOT RULES
FOR THE
RIVERS WHOSE WATERS FLOW INTO THE GULF OF
MEXICO AND THEIR TRIBUTARIES