Chapter 12 - Page 2

days)
sparring herself off.

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead,
hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake.
Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding,
especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night.
But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it.

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long,
with one end turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench,
with one of the supports left and the other removed.
It is anchored on the shoalest part of the reef by a
rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it.
But for the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench,
the current would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper
lantern with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy,
and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmering spark in
the waste of blackness.

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.
There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger;
it is so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer
a swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the boat
when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars;
it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows; there is
music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating, in summer,
to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the world
of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to the cub,
to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will simply say,
'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who instantly cries,
in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard! Strong on the larboard!
Starboard give way! With a will, men!' The cub enjoys sounding
for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching all
the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight;
and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastened
upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims away
in the remote distance.

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house
with her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love
with her. So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had been
bosom friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise.
I told the girl a good many of my river adventures, and made
myself out a good deal of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear
to be a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then he always
had a way of embroidering. However, virtue is its own reward,
so I was a barely perceptible trifle ahead in the