‘Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.’

I closed my mouth according to instructions.  An hour later, Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on.  He was a thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I knew Brown would have no pity on him.  Brown began, straightway—­

‘Here! why didn’t you tell me we’d got to land at that plantation?’

‘I did tell you, Mr. Brown.’

‘It’s a lie!’

I said—­

‘You lie, yourself.  He did tell you.’

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me—­

‘I’ll attend to your case in half a minute!’ then to Henry, ’And you leave the pilot-house; out with you!’

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed.  The boy started out, and even had his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy stool, and I hit Brown a good honest blow which stretched-him out.

I had committed the crime of crimes—­I had lifted my hand against a pilot on duty!  I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and couldn’t be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long account with this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with my fists a considerable time—­I do not know how long, the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;—­but in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel:  a very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody at the helm!  However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering herself straight down the middle and taking no chances.  Still, that was only luck—­a body might have found her charging into the woods.

Perceiving, at a glance, that the ‘Pennsylvania’ was in no danger, Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster.  But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English, calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted.  He could have done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species of controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel, muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench.  The racket had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I saw the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd.  I said to myself, ’Now I am done for!’—­For although, as a rule, he was so fatherly and indulgent toward the boat’s family, and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it.