He had an example of the perfection of this art one misty night on the Alonzo Child.  Nearly fifty years later, sitting on his veranda in the dark, he recalled it.  He said: 

“There was a pilot in those days by the name of Jack Leonard who was a perfectly wonderful creature.  I do not know that Jack knew anymore about the river than most of us and perhaps could not read the water any better, but he had a knack of steering away ahead of our ability, and I think he must have had an eye that could see farther into the darkness.

“I had never seen Leonard steer, but I had heard a good deal about it.  I had heard it said that the crankiest old tub afloat—­one that would kill any other man to handle—­would obey and be as docile as a child when Jack Leonard took the wheel.  I had a chance one night to verify that for myself.  We were going up the river, and it was one of the nastiest nights I ever saw.  Besides that, the boat was loaded in such a way that she steered very hard, and I was half blind and crazy trying to locate the safe channel, and was pulling my arms out to keep her in it.  It was one of those nights when everything looks the same whichever way you look:  just two long lines where the sky comes down to the trees and where the trees meet the water with all the trees precisely the same height —­all planted on the same day, as one of the boys used to put it—­and not a thing to steer by except the knowledge in your head of the real shape of the river.  Some of the boats had what they call a ‘night hawk’ on the jackstaff, a thing which you could see when it was in the right position against the sky or the water, though it seldom was in the right position and was generally pretty useless.

“I was in a bad way that night and wondering how I could ever get through it, when the pilot-house door opened, and Jack Leonard walked in.  He was a passenger that trip, and I had forgotten he was aboard.  I was just about in the worst place and was pulling the boat first one way, then another, running the wheel backward and forward, and climbing it like a squirrel.

“‘Sam,’ he said, ’let me take the wheel.  Maybe I have been over this place since you have.’

“I didn’t argue the question.  Jack took the wheel, gave it a little turn one way, then a little turn the other; that old boat settled down as quietly as a lamb—­went right along as if it had been broad daylight in a river without snags, bars, bottom, or banks, or anything that one could possibly hit.  I never saw anything so beautiful.  He stayed my watch out for me, and I hope I was decently grateful.  I have never forgotten it.”