My, but I hated to speak! It certainly seemed like my tongue clove, Like the Bible says, to the roof of my mouth! But I had to.     'Captain,' I says, and it seemed like another person was talking,     'Do you usu'lly take that island there on the eastward?'     'Yes,' he says, and he laughed, 'and I thought I had learnt you to do it, When you was going up.' 'But not going down, did you, captain?' [Pg 75]     'Down?' And he whirled at me, and, without ever stopping his laughing, Turned as white as a sheet, and his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets. Then he whirled back again, and looked up and down on the river, Like he was hunting out the shape of the shore and the landmarks. Well, I suppose the thing has happened to every one sometime, When you find the points of the compass have swapped with each other, And at the instant you're looking, the North and the South have changed places. I knew what was in his mind as well as Dunlevy himself did. Neither one of us spoke a word for nearly a minute. Then in a kind of whisper he says, 'Take the wheel, Captain Davis!'     Let the spokes fly, and while I made a jump forwards to catch them, Staggered into that chair—well, the very one you are in, ma'am. Set there breathing quick, and, when he could speak, all he said was,     'This is the end of it for me on the river, Jim Davis,' [Pg 76]     Reached up over his head for his coat where it hung by that window, Trembled onto his feet, and stopped in the door there a second, Stared in hard like as if for good-by to the things he was used to, Shut the door behind him, and never come back again through it."     While we were silent, not liking to prompt the pilot with questions,     "Well," he said, at last, "it was no use to argue. We tried it, In the half-hearted way that people do that don't mean it. Every one was his friend here on the Kanawha, and we knew It was the first time he ever had lost his bearings, but he knew, In such a thing as that, that the first and the last are the same time.     When we had got through trying our worst to persuade him, he only Shook his head and says, 'I am done for, boys, and you know it,'     Left the boat at Wheeling, and left his life on the river—     Left his life on the earth, you may say, for I don't call it living, [Pg 77]     Setting there homesick at home for the wheel he can never go back to. Reads the river-news regular; knows just the stage of the water Up and down the whole way from Cincinnati to Pittsburg; Follows every boat from the time she starts out in the spring-time Till she lays up in the summer, and then again in the winter; Wants to talk all about her and who is her captain and pilot; Then 

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