It would have been natural for me to have insisted on accompanying Mr. Stanley back to the cabin, but I had noticed in recent days that he seemed particularly on edge. That night I thought it best to keep to myself, which turned out to be a good thing.
So as my adoptive American father withdrew, I passed my time on the boiler deck among the standing passengers — those who did not have cabins — to continue my studies of the ancient texts of my little Geneva Bible.
At dusk a lovely night began unraveling before me. The orange skies were streaked with plumes of smoke from a distant cane-field fire and went melting into the waterline; mists were forming along the shore, and the first fires, as darkness descended, were appearing. There was something infinitely comforting about looking out toward the riverbank and seeing the lamps lighting the houses of the settlements, the occasional church window or dry-goods-store doorway warming with a glow as some preacher or clerk would spark the kerosene lamps, small flashes of brilliance suddenly coming through the darkness. Indeed, the signs of life that flickered out from the plantation-house windows a mile or two inland were also gratifying. I believed that they signaled the happy doings of domestic living. I could not help but reflect how even God’s forgotten creatures knew well the simple pleasures of companionship and the rewards of family, which so many take for granted. But not I.
There was a fellow stationed by a calliope, which he played all day from eight in the morning until eight at night, a pipe organ kind of music that became a signal to those along the shore of our arrival as we stopped by small and large towns. I much enjoyed it when the captain let the steam whistles blow as the children on shore seemed greatly delighted by our approach, the captain of the boat, leaning over the rail, tossing out handfuls of hard candies to the little pickaninnies, who shouted out their happy thanks. Such vessels were always filled with agreeable sounds — the full, round tones of ships’ bells ringing the hours; the constant churning of the side wheel; the calling of the knockabout seamen dropping their lines into the water to measure the depths in that ever-changing river: “By the mark twain!” “Quarter less three!” “Nine and a half!” “Seven feet!”
On that evening of drowsy, still waters, I found myself standing by the steamship railing studying some verses when I fell into a conversation with the riverboat pilot, who had come down from his wheelhouse to have a smoke on deck. He was something of a dandy, in his midtwenties, I supposed, of medium height, perhaps five feet eight, but he seemed taller in his polished boots and visored cap, a shock of flaming red hair and thick muttonchops around his leonine face. His was a large head tottering upon what seemed a somewhat thin body: sparely built, with narrow shoulders and small-boned, he had the most delicate of features. His gray-green eyes were like an eagle’s, I observed, and he seemed to look out at the world through narrow slits. In the light of a pine-knot torch I noticed that his hands were finely cared for, his nails neither black nor brittle like those of his usual cohorts. I had seen him before, but we had never spoken, because when he came down on the lower deck, he was often in the company of friends who’d gather around him as he would hold forth, telling jokes and sharing anecdotes in a lazy drawl, a cigar always lit in his hand. But that evening he clopped down the stairs alone and, gazing at the same shore as I, and perhaps amused by the fact that I was studiously reading my verses, inhaled upon his cigar, patted some ashes off the lapels off his smart frock, turned to me, and said: “Not a bad night, is it?” Then: “Care for a smoke?”
“I’m not one for that, but thank you,” I said.
“Well, to each his own.” Then: “You mind if I ask you a question?”
“No.”
“As you’re about the only young man I have ever seen on a riverboat reading a Bible in so intent a fashion when there’s so much else going on aboard, I have to presume that you have some connection with men of the cloth. Would I be correct in assuming that you are studying to become a preacher?”
“No, sir; to the contrary, I am learning the river merchant’s trade with my father, Mr. Stanley. Perhaps you have seen me in his company — he’s a tall, bearded man, perhaps the tallest man aboard ship. He is a former minister, and as such he has kept me to my verses.”
“A minister, was he? And now a river trader?”
“Yes, sir. But he has never kept the Good Book from his heart.”
“And what do you get from these verses?”
“Inspiration… and wisdom, mainly.”
“Inspiration and wisdom: two fine things, of which there’s not enough in this world. You must be the better for it, I will allow, though I’ve never had much of a taste for Sunday-school tales myself. Do you read other books?”
“By my estimation, sir, even with my mercantile duties, I read several a week: If I were not to become a merchant I have often thought I would like to become a writer of some kind, so influenced am I to dream from what I have read. But it is my father’s opinion that I am quite well suited to the trader’s life, though it is still very new to me, as are so many other things in this country.”
This comment seemed to puzzle him.
“Oh, so you are not from around here?”
“No, sir. I am originally from Wales.”
“So that accounts for some of the occasional strange soundings of brogue in your voice.” Then: “And so you and your father have come here from Wales?”
“No, sir. He’s originally from Savannah, Georgia, but you see, it was not so long ago, in fact last February, that I first arrived in New Orleans aboard a packet ship from Liverpool as a cabin boy. I was penniless at the time and alone. Low as I had sunk in those days, it was my good fortune to have made the acquaintance of the gentleman trader, Mr. Stanley: I have since come under his wing, as his adopted son.”
“So you’re an orphan?”
“As good as one; but now I am not. You see, in his kindness, Mr. Stanley has undertaken my education in the ways of the world and of books: He is a very learned man and so generous and pious that he has made me his own. I have only just recently taken his name.”
“And this name?”
“Henry Stanley.”
“Ah, Henry, a good name: It was my brother’s,” he said, seemingly laid low by some recollection. But then, extending his hand in friendship, he told me: “I’m Samuel Clemens, first pilot of this ship.”
GIVEN THE NATURE of my reserved character, I rarely engaged with strangers, the “small talk” and banter of such ships being of little interest to me. But the pilot, a congenial soul, also had a bookish bent of mind, for as we stood by the railing he told me, “I read quite a bit myself. Lately I have been dipping into all the works of Shakespeare and the writings of Goldsmith; but then I’ll generally read anything I can get my hands on — you name it, any books whatsoever… history, travel, literature, and the sciences. Such things are blessings as far as I’m concerned: Along with my cigars, they help me get through the slow moments of the night.”
Then, as he looked out over the waters, he said that it was in his interest to speak with strangers, as in those days, aside from being a pilot, he was also something of a writer. He told me it was his sideline to compose short and humorous profiles of the river folk he met, and such articles had been published in certain newspapers along the Mississippi since 1853. He had worked for newspapers in St. Louis and other places, but by the time I made his acquaintance that writing vocation had become a diversion rather than a necessity.