“’I want to get a cup of coffee.  You hold her, will you, till I come back?’ And before I could say a word he was out of the pilot-house door and down the steps.  It all came so suddenly that I sprang to the wheel, of course, as I would have done twenty years before.  Then in a moment I realized my position.  Here I was with a great big steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, without any further knowledge than that fact, and the pilot out of sight.  I settled my mind on three conclusions:  first, that the pilot might be a lunatic; second, that he had recognized me and thought I knew the river; third, that we were in a perfectly safe place, where I could not possibly kill the steamboat.  But that last conclusion, though the most comforting, was an extremely doubtful one.  I knew perfectly well that no sane pilot would trust his steamboat for a single moment in the hands of a greenhorn unless he were standing by the greenhorn’s side.  Of course, by force of habit, when I grabbed the wheel, I had taken the steering marks ahead and astern, and I made up my mind to hold her on those marks to the hair; but I could feel myself getting old and gray.  Then all at once I recognized where we were; we were in what is called the Grand Chain—­a succession of hidden rocks, one of the most dangerous places on the river.  There were two rocks there only about seventy feet apart, and you’ve got to go exactly between them or wreck the boat.  There was a time when I could have done it without a tremor, but that time wasn’t now.  I would have given any reasonable sum to have been on the shore just at that moment.  I think I was about ready to drop dead when I heard a step on the pilothouse stair; then the door opened and the pilot came in, quietly picking his teeth, and took the wheel, and I crawled weakly back to the seat.  He said: 

“’You thought you were playing a nice joke on me, didn’t you?  You thought I didn’t know who you were.  Why, I recognized that drawl of yours as soon as you opened your mouth.’

“I said, ‘Who the h—­l are you?  I don’t remember you.’

“‘Well,’ he said, ’perhaps you don’t, but I was a cub pilot on the river before the war, when you were a licensed pilot, and I couldn’t get a license when I was qualified for one, because the Pilots’ Association was so strong at that time that they could keep new pilots out if they wanted to, and the law was that I had to be examined by two licensed pilots, and for a good while I could not get any one to make that examination.  But one day you and another pilot offered to do it, and you put me through a good, healthy examination and indorsed my application for a license.  I had never seen you before, and I have never seen you since until now, but I recognized you.’

“‘All right,’ I said.  ’But if I had gone half a mile farther with that steamboat we might have all been at the bottom of the river.’