the call of the whistling buoy that sings at the mouth of
Gedney's, and can say "Good morning" to every bobbing juniper-spar that
marks the long ship lane (red lights on starboard buoys, as you come in,
white lights on port buoys), who know the way even when the glass and
iron lamp-frames are all but sunk with ice--west-northwest and a quarter
west for a mile and a half, till the beacon lights of Waackaack and
Point Comfort line out straight on the Jersey shore, then west by south
until the Sandy Hook light lines with the old South Beacon, then a short
way northwest by west and a quarter west until the Conover Beacon lines
with Chapel Hill, and so on straight to the Narrows.

These are the boys who know every rock and shoal in this most
treacherous bay, with its thirteen lighthouses, its two light-ships, and
its eighty danger spots, marked by nun-buoys, bell-buoys, electric-light
buoys, whistling buoys, all familiar to them as their own homes.

Great boys they are for story-telling, these pilots, and by the hour I
have listened to their memories of the sea. Two things made deep
impression on me (so do we of less heroic lives take note of weakness in
the strong)--one, that many pilots cannot swim (the same is true of
deep-sea divers), the other, that pilots, even after years at sea, may
be victims of seasickness like any novice. Pilot Breed, for instance,
as trusty a man as stands at a liner's wheel, assured me that every time
he goes out for duty he goes out for torture, too. And he does his duty
and he bears the torture, so that after all we must count this rather
strength than weakness.

[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF THE OREGON'S PASSENGERS.]

"How can you do your work," I asked, "if you are in such distress?"

"Because I have to," he answered, with a wistful smile. "You know
sailors are often seasick, but they go aloft just the same and
work--because they have to. You could do it yourself if you had to. And
yet," he added, half shutting his eyes, "I've many a time been so bad
when we've tossed and tossed for days and nights on the watch for
vessels that I've come pretty near to dropping quietly overboard and
ending it."

This he said without any special emphasis, yet one could see that it was
true.

"Why don't you give up the life?" I suggested.

"Perhaps I would," said he, "if I could do as well at anything else.
Besides--"

Then came the queerest reason. His father, it seems, a pilot before him,
had suffe