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CHAPTER XX.
A CATASTROPHE.
WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed
in finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a day-
light watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer. But I
was afraid; I had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I
believed I should be sure to get into trouble in the head of some
chute, or ground the boat in a near cut through some bar or other.
Brown remained in his place; but he would not travel "with me*
So the captain gave me an order on the captain of the * A. T. Lacey/
for a passage to St. Louis, and said he would find a new pilot there
and my steersman's berth could then be resumed. The * Lacey * was
to leave a couple of days after the * Pennsylvania,*
The night before the 'Pennsylvania* left, Henry and I sat
chatting on a freight pile on the levee till midnight. The subject of
the chat, mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before
—steamboat disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as we
suspected it; the water which was to make the- steam which should
cause it, was washing past some point fifteen hundred miles up the
river while we talked;—but it would arrive at the right time and the
right place. We doubted if persons not clothed with authority were
of much use in cases of disaster and attendant panic; still, they might
be of some use; so we decided that if a disaster ever fell within our
experience we would at least stick to the boat, and give such minor
service as chance might throw in the way. Henry remembered this,
afterward, when the disaster came, and acted accordingly.
The * Lacey * started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsyl-