Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/97

RENEWING AN OLD AMBITION Horace Bixby, 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."

Bixby was a small, clean-cut man. "Good morning, sir," he said, rather briskly, without looking around.

He did not much care for visitors in the pilothouse. This one entered and stood a little behind him.

"How would you like a young man to learn the river?" came to him in that serene, deliberate speech.

The pilot glanced over his shoulder and saw a rather slender, loose-limbed youth with a fair, girlish complexion and a great mass of curly auburn hair.

"I wouldn't like it. Cub pilots are more trouble than they're worth. A great deal more trouble than profit."

"I am a printer by trade," the easy voice went on. "It doesn't agree with me. I thought I'd go to South America."

Bixby kept his eye on the river, but there was interest in his voice when he spoke. "What makes you pull your words that way?" he asked—"pulling" being the river term for drawling.

The young man, now seated comfortably on the visitors' bench, said more slowly than ever: "You'll have to ask my mother—she pulls hers, too." 71