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[13] === “Mark Twain” (1878) Grant Marsh From 26 October 1859 until 24 February 1860 Twain piloted the A. B. Chambers No. 2. Grant Marsh (ca. 1834–1916), the first mate, reminisced years later about Twain’s courage in a crisis. When the steamboat went aground north of Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers converge, Twain braved ice floes to lead a party scavenging for fuel. Less than a year earlier, he had recounted a similar experience in a letter to Orion and Mollie Clemens (Mark Twain’s Letters 1:76–79). “oh, yes! I knew Sam Clemens. I was on the boat A. B. Chambers with him the winter I was married, in ’59 and ’60. Sam was pilot and I was mate. He was not a great pilot, but he was a brave fellow. He didn’t know what fear was. He never smiled, but was joking whenever he got a good chance. I believe he once saved my life, his own, and six others. Our steamer was lying above Cairo on a sandbar. We were out of wood and the captain ordered Sam, me, and the six roustabouts to get in a yawl and row up the river and bring down a flatboat loaded with wood. The river was full of floating lee. We rowed up on the opposite bank from the flatboat. The ice was running almost solid, with an occasional opening by the ice blocking up. We took advantage of these openings to shoot across the river. When we got into the channel a short distance I saw the danger we were encountering. The ice was liable to close in on us and drown the whole outfit. I appealed to Sam to row back. There was an opening in the rear. Sam resolutely: ‘No.’ In another minute the ice broke in the path behind the boat and crushed by with terrific force. Had we turned back when I suggested it, we would have been ‘goners,’ every mother’s son of us. Sam’s judgment was not questioned again on that trip.” Grant Marsh, “Mark Twain,” St. Louis Missouri Republican, 8 December 1878, 7. ...

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