第26章 Continued Perplexities(2)

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr.Bixby came in and said,with mock simplicity--'When you have a hail,my boy,you ought to tap the big bell three times before you land,so that the engineers can get ready.'

I blushed under the sarcasm,and said I hadn't had any hail.

'Ah!Then it was for wood,I suppose.The officer of the watch will tell you when he wants to wood up.'

I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.

'Indeed?Why,what could you want over here in the bend,then?

Did you ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the river?'

'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it.I was getting away from a bluff reef.'

'No,it wasn't a bluff reef;there isn't one within three miles of where you were.'

'But I saw it.It was as 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 her before.

I impressed my orders upon my memory,to be used at the inquest,and made a straight break for the reef.As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath;but we slid over it like oil.

'Now don't you see the difference?It wasn't anything but a WIND reef.The wind does that.'

'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 sparkingly renewed with every re-perusal.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 dead-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 Iknew the letters of the alphabet,I had made a valuable acquisition.