At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my headfull of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiouslyinanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as Icould shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of these nameswithout leaving out more than ten miles of river in every fifty,I began to feel that I could take a boat down to New Orleans if Icould make her skip those little gaps. But of course my complacencycould hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air,before Mr. Bixby would think of something to fetch it down again.

One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler--'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm.

I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had anyparticular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many roundsof ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable andeven remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone.

That word 'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more thanthirty-four. I waited. By and by he said--'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly.

It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.

Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn'tthe same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.'

'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'

'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you knowthe shape of it. You can't see it.'

'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variationsof shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shapeof the front hall at home?'

'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man everdid know the shapes of the halls in his own house.'

'I wish I was dead!'

'Now I don't want to discourage you, but----'

'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'

'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any gettingaround it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadowsthat if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you wouldclaw away from every bunch of timber, because you would takethe black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you wouldbe getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch.

You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when youought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snagin one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is,and the shape of the river tells you when you are coming to it.

Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very differentshape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night.

All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too;and you'd RUN them for straight lines only you know better.

You boldly drive your boat right into what seems to be a solid,straight wall (you knowing very well that in reality there isa curve there), and that wall falls back and makes way for you.

Then there's your gray mist. You take a night when there's oneof these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't anyparticular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the headof the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kindsof MOONLIGHT change the shape of the river in different ways.

You see----'

'Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of the riveraccording to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I triedto carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-shouldered.'

'NO! you only learn THE shape of the river, and you learn it with suchabsolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's IN YOUR HEAD,and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'

'Very well, I'll try it; but after I have learned it can I depend on it.

Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?'

Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W---- came in to take the watch,and he said--'Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's Island and allthat country clear away up above he Old Hen and Chickens.

The banks are caving and the shape of the shores changinglike everything. Why, you wouldn't know the point above 40.

You can go up inside the old sycamore-snag, now.

It may not be necessary, but still it can do no harm to explainthat 'inside' means between the snag and the shore.--M.T.]>

So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing shape.

My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparentto me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more thanany one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learnit all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours.

That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient rivercustom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed.

While the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar,his partner, the retiring pilot, would say something like this--'I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale's Point;had quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain'Quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms, thirteen-and-a-half feet.

'Mark three' is three fathoms.]> with the other.'

'Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip.

Meet any boats?'

'Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,and I couldn't make her out entirely. I took her for the "Sunny South"--hadn't any skylights forward of the chimneys.'

And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel hispartnerpilot'.]> would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend,and say we were abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yardor plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity.

But Mr. W---- came on watch full twelve minutes late onthis particular night,--a tremendous breach of etiquette;in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots.

So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrenderedthe wheel and marched out of the pilot-house without a word.

I wa............