ught.

It was the high-tide of spring, late in April, when the prospective
cocoa-hunter decided that it was time to set out for the upper Amazon.
He had saved money enough to carry him at least as far as New Orleans,
where he would take ship, it being farther south and therefore nearer his
destination. Furthermore, he could begin with a lazy trip down the
Mississippi, which, next to being a pilot, had been one of his most
cherished dreams. The Ohio River steamers were less grand than those of
the Mississippi, but they had a homelike atmosphere and did not hurry.
Samuel Clemens had the spring fever and was willing to take his time.

In "Life on the Mississippi" we read that the author ran away, vowing
never to return until he could come home a pilot, shedding glory. But
this is the fiction touch. He had always loved the river, and his
boyhood dream of piloting had time and again returned, but it was not
uppermost when he bade good-by to Macfarlane and stepped aboard the "Paul
Jones," bound for New Orleans, and thus conferred immortality on that
ancient little craft.

Now he had really started on his voyage. But it was a voyage that would
continue not for a week or a fortnight, but for four years--four
marvelous, sunlit years, the glory of which would color all that followed
them.

XII.

RENEWING AN OLD AMBITION

A reader of Mark Twain's Mississippi book gets the impression that the
author was a boy of about seventeen when he started to learn the river,
and that he was painfully ignorant of the great task ahead. But this
also is the fiction side of the story. Samuel Clemens was more than
twenty-one when he set out on the "Paul Jones," and in a way was familiar
with the trade of piloting. Hannibal had turned out many pilots. An
older brother of the Bowen boys was already on the river when Sam Clemens
was rolling rocks down Holliday's Hill. Often he came home to air his
grandeur and hold forth on the wonder of his work. That learning the
river was no light task Sam Clemens would know as well as any one who had
not tried it.

Nevertheless, as the drowsy little steamer went puffing down into softer,
sunnier lands, the old dream, the "permanent ambition" of boyhood,
returned, while the call of the far-off Amazon and cocoa drew faint.

Horace Bixby,[2] pilot of the "Paul Jones," a man of thirty-two, was
looking out over the bow at the head of Island No. 35 when he heard a
slow, pleasant voice say, "Good morning.