Chapter 8

Chapter 8
Perplexing Lessons

At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head
full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiously
inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I
could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names
without leaving out more than ten miles of river in every fifty,
I began to feel that I could take a boat down to New Orleans if I
could make her skip those little gaps. But of course my complacency
could hardly get start enough to lift my nose a trifle into the air,
before Mr. Bixby would think of something to fetch it down again.
One day he turned on me suddenly with this settler--

'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm.
I reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any
particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,
and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds
of ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and
even remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone.
That word 'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more than
thirty-four. I waited. By and by he said--

'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly.
It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night.
Everything else is blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't
the same shape in the night that it has in the day-time.'

'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'

'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you know
the shape of it. You can't see it.'

'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations
of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape
of the front hall at home?'

'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man ever
did know the shapes of the halls in his own house.'

'I wish I was dead!'

'Now I don't want to discourage you, but----'

'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'

'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any getting
around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows
that if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly you would
claw away from every bunch of timber, because you would take
the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see you would
be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch.
You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you
ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag
in one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is,