"No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles
of where you were."
"But I saw it. It was a bluff as that one yonder."
"Just about. Run over it."
"Do you give it as an order?"
"Yes. Run over it!"
"If I don't, I wish I may die."
"All right; I am taking the responsibility."
I was just as anxious to kill the boat, now, as I had been to save
it before. I impressed my orders upon my memory, to be used at the
inquest, and made a straight break for the reef. As is disappeared
under our bows I held my breath; but we slid over it like oil.
"So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever
going to tell them apart?"
"I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just
naturally know one from the other, but you never will be able to explain
why or how you know them apart."
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became
a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated
passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering
its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a
voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for
it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred
miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one
that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would
want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other
thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one
whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed
with every reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed
with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions
when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was
an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend
of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points
at the end of it, for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there
that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated.
It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and
the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could
not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in
it, painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained
eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dread-earnest
of reading matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come
to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly
as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition.
But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never
be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry,
had gone out of the majestic river! I still kept in mind a certain
wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me.
A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance
the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came
floating, black and conspicuous; one place along, slanting mark lay
sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling,
tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy
flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful
circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore
on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from
this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that
shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed
dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the
unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful
curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over
the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily,
enriching it every passing moment with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture.
The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at
home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting
the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether
to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should
have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon
it, inwardly, after this fashion: "This sun means that we are
going to have wind tomorrow; that floating log means that the river
is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers
to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of
these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling
'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there, the lines
and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that troublesome
place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow
of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself
in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats;
that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to
last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind
place at night without the friendly old landmark?
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All
the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness
it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.
Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the
lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that
ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms
sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay?
Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her
professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to
himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most
or lost most by learning his trade?
