Page:Life on the Mississippi (IA lifeonmississipptwai).pdf/95

Rh was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had slept since the voyage began.

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans



boat, and I packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I stood in her pilot house I was so far above the water that I seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the little "Paul Jones" a large craft. There were other differences, too. The "Paul Jones's" pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap,