chandeliers; the clerk’s office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.  The boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of men.  The fires were fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers!  This was unutterable pomp.  The mighty engines—­but enough of this.  I had never felt so fine before.  And when I found that the regiment of natty servants respectfully ‘sir’d’ me, my satisfaction was complete.

Chapter 7 A Daring Deed

When I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.  Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could make neither head nor tail of it:  you understand, it was turned around.  I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see how it looked when it was behind me.  My heart broke again, for it was plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river both ways.

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to ‘look at the river.’  What is called the ‘upper river’ (the two hundred miles between St. Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find it necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.  A deal of this ‘looking at the river’ was done by poor fellows who seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot’s sudden illness, or some other necessity.  And a good many of them constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat) it was cheaper to ‘look at the river’ than stay ashore and pay board.  In time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats that had an established reputation for setting good tables.  All visiting pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or assist the boat’s pilots in any way they could.  They were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are always interesting.  Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.