The river changes, Joshua, that it does. Ain’t never the same twice in a row, and you got to know every inch of it.” Marsh strolled to the wheel and put one of his own hands on it, fondly. “Now, I plan to pilot this boat, at least once. I dreamed about her too long not to want to take her in my hands. When we go against the Eclipse, I mean to stand a spell in the pilot house, that I do. But she’s too grand a boat for anything but the New Orleans trade, and that means the lower river, so I’m going to have to start learnin’ myself, learn every damn foot. Takes time, takes work.” He looked at York. “You still want to pilot, now that you know what it means?”

“We can learn together, Abner,” York replied.

York’s companions were growing restless. They wandered from window to window, Brown shifting the lantern from one hand to the other, Simon as grim as a cadaver. Smith said something to York in their foreign tongue. York nodded. “We must be going back,” he said.

Marsh glanced around one final time, reluctant to leave even now, and led them from the pilot house.

When they had trudged partway through the boatyards, York turned and looked back toward their steamboat where she sat on her pilings, pale against the darkness. The others stopped as well, and waited silently.

“Do you know Byron?” York asked Marsh.

Marsh thought a minute. “Know a fellow named Blackjack Pete used to pilot on the Grand Turk. I think his last name was Brian.”

York smiled. “Not Brian, Byron. Lord Byron, the English poet.”

“Oh,” said Marsh. “Him. I’m not much a one for poems. I think I heard of him, though. Gimp, wasn’t he? And quite a one for the ladies.”

“The very one, Abner. An astounding man. I had the good fortune to meet him once. Our steamboat put me in mind of a poem he once wrote.” He began to recite.

She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright