And I've
never regretted it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the
way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the
world - all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where
they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so that it made
his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it
wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be
nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of
drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot
was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten.
That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of
him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out
of him, and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and
the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her
amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to
do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone.
You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer
her than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina
election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made,
they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it;
I backed her out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river
all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four
horribly crooked crossings - '
'Without any rudder?'
'Yes - old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me
for running such a dark night - '
'Such a DARK NIGHT ? - Why, you said - '
'Never mind what I said, - 'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon
the moon began to rise, and - '
'You mean the SUN - because you started out just at break of - look here!
Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or - '
'It was before - oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he - '
'But was this the trip she sunk, or was - '
'Oh, no! - months afterward. And so the old man, he - '
'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said - '
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and
said -
'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while - you're
handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a stranger and an
innocent! - why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words; and I made
up my mind to find out what was your little game.
