He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation.

He ranged the whole boat--visited every part of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last, those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from heart disease, in 1869.

The captain was on the roof at the time.

He saw the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor.
Mr.Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured, but the other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown into the river from the wheel, and disabled.

The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he was rescued by some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck.