-A PILOT'S &JBJB&3. 129
oorn and fodder \ corn and fodder would suggest cows and horses;
cows and horses "would suggest the circus and certain celebrated bare-
back riders ; the transition from the circus to the menagerie was easy
and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step ;
then of course the heathen savages would suggest religion ; and at
the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch would change;
and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering extracts from
sermons he had heard years before about the efficacy of prayer as a
means of grace. And the original first mention would be all you had
learned about that dog, after all this waiting and hungering.
A pilot must have a memory ; but there are two higher qualities
which he must also have. He must have good and quick judgment
and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give
a man the merest trifle of pluck to start with, and by the time he has
become a pilot he cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboat
can get into; but one cannot quite say the same for judgment. Judg-
ment is a matter of brains, and a man must start with a good stock
of that article or he will never succeed as a pilot.
The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time,
but it does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some
time after the young pilot has been * standing his own watch/ alone
and under the staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected
with the position. When an appi-entice has become pretty thoroughly
acquainted with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with
Ms steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that
it is his courage that am'mates him; but the first time the pilot steps
out and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other
man's. He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment
he is not prepared for them j he does not know how to meet them;
all his knowledge forsakes him ; and within fifteen minutes he is as
white as a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely
train these cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face
a little more calmly. A favourite way of theirs is to play a friendly
swindle upon the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years*afterward
T used to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become