om had never jumped for the guard at all, but
had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel. It was
nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody
went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he
had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of that
pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed her,
any way.

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the
buoy-light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell
away and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a
position a hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the
steamer's course, headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having
to wait some time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when
he judged that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was
gone, but supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went
on with his talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on
him, but that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him
closely, for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to
sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was
trying to run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he
sang out, 'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant
the jump was made.

Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make
plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the
peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there
is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has
brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is
so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'
sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if
he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the
vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing
it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river and
know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street
in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently
until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and
little sign by heart,