H2 LlJf'Jii ON TMJS MISSISSIPPI.
the most august wealth. He always had work, he never saved a
penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, he was in debt to every
pilot on the river, and to the majority of the captains. He could
throw a sort of splendour around a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may
care piloting, that made it almost fascinating—but not to everybody.
He made a trip with good old Captain Y------ once, and was
* relieved' from duty when the boat got to New Orleans. Some-
body expressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y------shuddered
at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice
piped out something Jike this :—
* Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my
boat for the world—not for the whole world ! He swears, he sings,
he whistles, he yells—I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times
of the night—it never made any difference to him. He would just
yell that way, not for anything in particular, but merely on account
of a kind of devilish comfort he got out of it. I never could get into
a sound sleep but he would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat,
with one of those dreadful war-whoops. A queer being—very queer
being; no respect for anything or anybody. Sometimes he called
me " Johnny." And he kept a fiddle, and a cat. He played
execrably. This seemed to distress the cat, and so the cat would
howl. Nobody could sleep where that man—and his family—was.
And reckless $ There never was anything like it. Now you may
believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here, he brought my
boat a-tilting down through those awful snags at Chicot under a
rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very nation,.,
at that! My officers will tell you so. They saw it. And, sir,
while he was a-tearing right down through those snags, and I a-
shaking in my shoes and praying, I wish I may never speak again if
he didn't pucker up his mouth and go to whistling I Yes, sir;
whistling " Buffalo gals, can't you come out to night, can't you come
out to-night, can't you come out to-night;' and doing it as calmly as
if we were attending a funeral and weren't related to the corpse.
And when I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled down on me
as if I was his child, and told me to run in the house and try to be
good, and not be meddling with my superiors ! * *
1 Considering a captain's ostentatious but hollow chieftainship, and a pilot's