56

LIFE 0JT THE MISSISSIPPI.

confidence of my time of life. If I had really known what. I was
about to require of my faculties, I should not have had the courage to
begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the
river, and I did not consider that that could be much of a trick, since

it was so wide.

The boat
packed out from
New Orleans at
four in the after-
noon, and it was
* our watch ' until
eight. Mr. Bixby,
my chief,' stiuight-
ened her up/
plowed her along
past the sterns of
the other boats
that lay at the
Levee, and then
said, * Here, take
her; shave those
steamships as close
as you Jd peel an
apple.' I took the
wheel, and my
heart-beat flut-
tered up into the
hundreds; for it
seemed to me that
we were about to scrape the
side off every ship in the line,
we were so close. I held my
breath and began to claw the
boat away from the danger;

and I had my own opinion of the pilot who had known no better
than to get us into such peril, but I was too wise to express it. In
half a minute I had a wide margin of safety intervening between

'HE EASILY BORROWED SIX DOLLAES.'