s body like
a knife when the towing-bitts pulled out, and cut him clean in two.

Then there was that Norwegian apprentice, who was lost when they tried
to send a small boat after Denny Reardon on the _Massachusetts_, in the
storm of November, 1897. The _Massachusetts_ was loaded with lions,
tigers, and elephants--the whole Barnum & Bailey show--and Reardon had
just got her safely over the bar. There was a fierce sea on that night,
and Reardon waited at the steamer's side--waited and peered out at the
flare-up light, while the boys on the _New York_ tried to do the
launching trick. And in one of the upsets this Norwegian chap was swept
astern and churned to death in the screw-blades.

[Illustration: A PILOT-BOAT RIDING OUT A STORM.]

Then there was Harry Devere, a Brooklyn pilot, who happened to be out in
the cyclone of 1894, miles from land, in the little pilot-schooner, with
its jaunty "17" on the canvas. There they were, riding out the storm, as
pilot-boats do (facing it, not running), when up loomed a big West
Indian fruiter, burning a blue light forward, which meant she was in
sore need of a man at the wheel who knew the dangers in these parts. The
old ocean was killing mad that night, air and water straining in a death
struggle, and already four pilots had been carried on by liners, carried
on to Europe because there was no human way of putting them off.

To start for that vessel now was madness, and every man in the
pilot-crew knew it, and so did Devere. But he started just the same. He
said he would try, and he did--tried through a cyclone that was sweeping
a whole heaven of snow down upon the bellowing sea as if to smother its
fury. Down into this they went, three of them, and somehow, by a miracle
of skill, got the yawl under the vessel's lea. Then smash they were
hurled against the iron side, and Devere sprang for the rope ladder--a
poor, fluttering thing. He caught it, held fast, and the next moment was
torn away by a great wave that cast him back into the waste of waters.
And so he perished.

You ought to hear them tell these stories!

On the whole it seemed clear there is danger enough in this calling for
the most extravagant taste. And the chief danger is not this boarding of
vessels in storms, nor yet the dancing out of tempests in cockle-shell
craft, where a steamer would scurry to shelter; neither of these, but
the everlasting peril of being run down. That is a danger to break men's
nerves, for al