In running downstream, when you point into the bank, and shave it closely, you pull the bow of the boat away, and then there are two forces over which you have no control with your steering wheel: the impetus of the after half of your boat is still in the direction of the bank, after the forward half has begun to swing away; which would also be the case in a perfectly dead lake. In the river, you have the second force in the current which is pressing against the whole of the hull, but more particularly against the after part, and this is pushing the boat in toward the bank after you have pulled her bow away from it. The result is, that while you may clear the bank with the bow of the boat, the stern swings in and gets the punishment.
Because of these two laws of physics, it was almost impossible to run a stern-wheel boat around the sharp bend in Coon Slough, a feat which "Tom" Burns performed several times without stopping a wheel. "Jack" Harris tried it with the big side-wheeler, the "Northern Light", late in the fall, when the anchor ice was running. Her bow got around all right; but her stern swung into the ice which had lodged in the bend, with the result that the whole stern was torn away, and she sank in twenty feet of water. "Ned" West tried a similar experiment at Dayton Bluff, just below St. Paul, with the "Key City". He ran in very close to the rocky shore, under full headway. He got her head out in good shape, but the stern struck the rocks, tearing out the rudder and smashing the deadwood. He worked her back to St. Paul with the wheels alone, and there the damage was repaired. I doubt if he was even reprimanded, for he was the "fastest" pilot on the upper river, as well as one of the best, and getting eight hundred dollars a month for his services. He could get a boat over the course from St. Louis to St. Paul, in less time than any other pilot could take the same boat, and that of course carried with it the supposition that he knew the river as well as any man.
I learned the lesson myself through inattention. I was well acquainted with the principle through precept, and had been very careful not to run too near the bank. Coming down from St. Croix Falls with the "H. S. Allen", on reaching the mouth of the Apple River, I saw a school of black bass lying on the white sandy bottom where the Apple River empties into the St. Croix. The inflow from Apple River sets almost squarely across the St. Croix, and when the former is in flood the current sets nearly across the channel. To meet it, it is necessary to point toward the incoming current, to prevent being thrown against the opposite bank. Being an ardent fisherman I was deeply interested in the scores of fine fish plainly distinguishable from the height of the pilot house. The result was inevitable. I neglected to point the bow of the boat sufficiently against the inflow, and she took a sheer for the opposite bank the instant she struck the cross current. I pulled the wheel hard over in an instant, and got the bow clear of the overhanging timber, but the stern went under, and when it came out the "H. S. Allen" lacked two escape pipes and half of the washroom and laundry. The stewardess herself was short about half her senses, and all her temper. The captain had seen the same trick performed by older and better pilots than myself, and was not unduly distressed. It took about one hundred dollars to make the boat presentable. I did not tell about the black bass for some time after the incident occurred—long enough after so that there would be no obvious connection between the fish and the missing laundry.
The man who has once mastered the art of steering a steamboat on Western waters, never loses his love for it. Whatever may have been his occupation after leaving the river, his hands instinctively reach out for the wheel if fortune so favors him as to place the opportunity within his reach. I mean, of course, the man who sees and feels more than the mere turning of the wheel so many hours a day, for so much money to be paid at the completion of his task. It may be work, and hard work, for the enthusiast as well as for the hireling; but with the man who puts his spirit into the task, it is work ennobled by painstaking devotion, and glorified by the realization of work artistically and lovingly done. To such a man there is an exhilaration about the handling of a big steamboat in the crooked channels of the Great River, akin to that felt by the accomplished horseman when guiding a spirited team of roadsters, or that of the engineer, holding the throttle of a great locomotive rushing over the rails at a speed of sixty miles an hour. However long the hands of the horseman or the engineer may have been divorced from reins or throttle, there is the same longing to grasp the one or the other when the opportunity offers. It is a wholly natural craving of the inner being; and however inexplicable it may be, it is there.
For forty years, since leaving the river for other pursuits, often harassing and full of care, I have dreamed, time and again, of holding a wheel on one of the old-time boats on which I served as a boy. In my sleep I have felt again the satisfaction in work well done, the mortification of failure, and have felt again the cares and responsibilities that weighed so heavily when beset with difficulties and dangers. It is all as real as though I again stood at the wheel, doing real work, and achieving real victories over besetting difficulties and dangers. Mere work, as a means of earning a living, would not take such hold upon one's nature. It is the soul of the artist incarnate in the pilot.
Chapter XIII
An Initiation
I have said that in addition to "knowing the river", and knowing that he knows it, the young pilot must also be fortified with a large measure of self-reliance, or all else will go for nothing. The time of trial comes to every one, sooner or later, and the manner in which it is met usually determines the standing of the young novitiate in the estimation of river men. The reputation of every man on the river is common property the length of his run, from St. Louis to St. Paul. It was proverbial that river men "talked shop" more than any others, in those early days, probably because they were more interested in their own business than they were in that of other men. Possibly because, as one government engineer stated it, they didn't know anything else. However, the doings of all the river men were pretty thoroughly discussed sooner or later, from the latest dare-devil exhibition of fancy piloting by "Ned" West, to the mistakes and mishaps of the youngest "cub". Sooner or later, each and all were served up at the casual meetings of river men, at whatever port they might foregather.
My own "baptism"—not of "fire", but of water and lightning—came on the very first trip I made alone on a steamboat. I had been running with Charley Jewell on the "H. S. Allen", from Prescott to St. Croix Falls. Mr. Jewell fell sick and was laid off at Prescott. On the levee, the day he went home, was a steamboat load of rope, rigging, boats, and camp-equipage, together with a couple of hundred raftsmen landed from a down-river packet that did not care to make the run up the lake. The disembarked men were anxious to reach Stillwater with their cargo, that night. Our regular starting time, as a United States mail boat, was at 7 o'clock in the morning. They offered extra compensation if we would take them up that night, and the proposition was accepted by Captain Gray. All hands were set to work loading the stuff. I felt quite elated at the prospect, as it was a bright evening, and I felt sure of finding my way, for there were only three or four close places to run in the thirty miles of lake navigation between Prescott and Stillwater.
We got everything aboard, and I backed her out and started up the lake. There had been some lightning in the north, where there was a bank of low-lying clouds. So far away were they, apparently, that no one thought of a storm, certainly not a serious one. We were running toward it, however, and as we soon discovered, it was coming to meet us at a rattling pace. We met when about six miles above Prescott. First a terrific wind out of the north, followed by torrents of rain, and incessant lightning, which took on the appearance of chain-mail as it shimmered and glittered on the falling rain drops. I put up the breast-board, and let down the head-board as far as I could and still leave room between to look out ahead; but the fierce wind drove the rain in sheets into the pilot house, and in a minute's time I was completely soaked. The lightning and thunder were terrifying in brilliancy and in sharpness of sound, the flash and the report coming so closely together as to leave no doubt that the bolts were getting seriously close to the smokestacks. The pilot house was not the place I would have chosen from which to enjoy these effects, had I my choice. The place I really longed for was somewhere down below, where I would have felt less conspicuous as a target.