The watchman said—­

‘Well, if this an’t good, I’m blest.’

The ‘off-watch’ was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks as ’Hello, watchman! an’t the new cub turned out yet?  He’s delicate, likely.  Give him some sugar in a rag and send for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.’

About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene.  Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms.  Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting.  Here was something fresh—­this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work.  It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me at all.  I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them.  I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.

It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.  The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star and was holding her straight up the middle of the river.  The shores on either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct.  The mate said:—­

‘We’ve got to land at Jones’s plantation, sir.’

The vengeful spirit in me exulted.  I said to myself, I wish you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you’ll have a good time finding Mr. Jones’s plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never will find it as long as you live.

Mr. Bixby said to the mate:—­

‘Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?’

‘Upper.’

’I can’t do it.  The stumps there are out of water at this stage:  It’s no great distance to the lower, and you’ll have to get along with that.’

’All right, sir.  If Jones don’t like it he’ll have to lump it, I reckon.’

And then the mate left.  My exultation began to cool and my wonder to come up.  Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred.  I dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace.  All I desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color.  But I held in.  I used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.

Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as if it had been daylight.  And not only that, but singing—­

‘Father in heaven, the day is declining,’ etc.

It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly reckless outcast.  Presently he turned on me and said:—­