190

LITE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

me, all by the one operation. Whenever I took the wheel for a
moment on Ealer's watch, Eitchie would sit back on the bench and
play Brown, with continual ejaculations of * Snatch her ! snatch her I
Perndest mud-cat I ever saw ! * * Here ! Where you going now ?
Going to run over that snag ]' - Pull her down / Don't you hear
me ? Pull her down ! J * There she goes ! Just as I expected 1 I
toll YOU not to cramp that reef. G' way from the wheel! *

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it
was; and sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-patured
badgering was
pretty nearly as
aggravating as \
Brown's dead
earnest nagging.

*1 KILLED BROWS EVEBT XIGHT.'

I often, wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub
bad to take everything his^boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment
and criticism; said we ail believed that there was a United States
law making it a penitentiary ofience to strike or threaten a pilot who
was on duty. However, I could imagine myself killing Brown;
there was no law against that; and that was the thing I used always
to do the moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river in
my mind as was my duty, I threw business aside for pleas-tire, and
Jailed Brown. I killed Brown every night for months; not in old,
stale, commonplace ways, but in new and picturesque ones,—ways