"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 long 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?
Course
Readings