CHAPTER Till.
PEKPLEXING LESSONS.
AT the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack
my head full of islands, towns, bars, * points/ and bends j and a
curiously inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch
as I could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names
without leaving out more than ten miles of river in every fifty, I
began to feel that I could take a boat down to New Orleans if J
could make her skip those little gaps. But of course my complacency
could hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air,
before Mr, Bixby would think of something to fetch it down again.
One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler—
6 What is the shape of Walnut Bend ?'
He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of
protoplasm. I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it
had any particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with &
bang, of course, and then went on loading and firing until he was out
of adjectives.
I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds
of ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and even
remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone. That word
* old' is merely affectionate; he was not more than thirty-four. I
waited. By and by he said—
* My boy, you've got to know the sfiape of the river perfectly. It
Is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is
blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't the same shaDe in the
night that it has in the day-time/
' How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then ?'