“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!” This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again. Then came the leadsman’s sepulchral cry: “D-e-e-p four!” Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath away. “M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less-three! Half twain!” This was frightful! I seized the bell-rope and stopped the engines. “Quarter twain! Quarter twain! _Mark_ twain!” I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far. “Quarter-_less_-twain! Nine-and-a-half!” We were _drawing_ nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted to the engineer: “Oh, Ben, if you love me, _back_ her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal _soul_ out of her!” I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood Mr. Bixby, smiling, a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said: “It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, _wasn’t_ it? I suppose I’ll never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the head of 66.” “Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t; for I want you to learn something by that experience. Didn’t you know there was no bottom in that crossing?” “Yes, sir, I did.” “Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody else to shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don’t turn coward. That isn’t going to help matters any.” It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, “Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!” _FROM_ “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” (1877–80) BIRTHS OF HIGH AND LOW DEGREE