This said--Let me take her,George;I've seen this place since you have,and it is so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier than I could tell you how to do it.'
'It is kind of you,and I swear I am willing.
I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me.
I have been spinning around and around the wheel like a squirrel.
It is so dark I can't tell which way she is swinging till she is coming around like a whirligig.'
So Ealer took a seat on the bench,panting and breathless.
The black phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything,steadied the waltzing steamer with a turn or two,and then stood at ease,coaxing her a little to this side and then to that,as gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noonday.
When Ealer observed this marvel of steering,he wished he had not confessed!He stared,and wondered,and finally said--'Well,I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat,but that was another mistake of mine.'
X.said nothing,but went serenely on with his work.He rang for the leads;he rang to slow down the steam;he worked the boat carefully and neatly into invisible marks,then stood at the center of the wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness,fore and aft,to verify his position;as the leads shoaled more and more,he stopped the engines entirely,and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting'followed when the shoalest water was struck,he cracked on the steam,carried her handsomely over,and then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal marks;the same patient,heedful use of leads and engines followed,the boat slipped through without touching bottom,and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing;imperceptibly she moved through the gloom,crept by inches into her marks,drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried,and then,under a tremendous head of steam,went swinging over the reef and away into deep water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great,relieving sigh,and said--'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the Mississippi River!I wouldn't believed it could be done,if I hadn't seen it.'
There was no reply,and he added--
'Just hold her five minutes longer,partner,and let me run down and get a cup of coffee.'
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie,down in the 'texas,'and comforting himself with coffee.Just then the night watchman happened in,and was about to happen out again,when he noticed Ealer and exclaimed--'Who is at the wheel,sir?'
'X.'
'Dart for the pilot-house,quicker than lightning!'
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,three steps at a jump!Nobody there!The great steamer was whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will!
The watchman shot out of the place again;Ealer seized the wheel,set an engine back with power,and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a 'towhead'which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!
By and by the watchman came back and said--
'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep,when he first came up here?'
'NO.'
'Well,he was.I found him walking along on top of the railings just as unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement;and I put him to bed;now just this minute there he was again,away astern,going through that sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as before.'
'Well,I think I'll stay by,next time he has one of those fits.
But I hope he'll have them often.You just ought to have seen him take this boat through Helena crossing.I never saw anything so gaudy before.
And if he can do such gold-leaf,kid-glove,diamond-breastpin piloting when he is sound asleep,what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!'