74

LIFE  O1T THE MISSISSIPPI.

'We touched bottom ! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,
shouted through the tube, 6 JFow, let her have it—every ounce you've
got!' then to his partner, e Put her hard down ! snatch her I snatch
her!' The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand,
hung upon the apex of disaster a single tremendous instant, and
then over she went! And such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's
back never loosened the roof of a pilot-house before!
There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero
that night • and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased
to be talked about by river men.
Fully to realise the marvellous precision required in laying the
great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should
know that not only must she pick her intricate way through snags
and blind reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely as to
brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she
must pass almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck
that would snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should
strike it, and destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-
boat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human
lives into the bargain.
The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr.
Bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests.
He said—
' By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot 1'