No particular place to meet and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but chance and unsatisfactory ways of getting news.

The consequence was that a man sometimes had to run five hundred miles of river on information that was a week or ten days old.

At a fair stage of the river that might have answered; but when the dead low water came it was destructive.
Now came another perfectly logical result.

The outsiders began to ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble, whereas accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men.
Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnished exclusively with outsiders, and previously considered to be wholly independent of the association and free to comfort themselves with brag and laughter, began to feel pretty uncomfortable.

Still, they made a show of keeping up the brag, until one black day when every captain of the lot was formally ordered to immediately discharge his outsiders and take association pilots in their stead.