ways, night and day, the pilot-boats must lie in the swift
track of the liners--right in the track, else they will pass unseen--and
it must be known that this is a narrow track, a funnel for the ships of
all the world, which pass ceaselessly, ceaselessly, converging from all
ports, diverging to all ports, in storm, in fog, in darkness, and there
the pilot-boats must lie, flying their square blue flags by day, burning
their flare-up lights every fifteen minutes by night, waiting, waiting,
in just such strained suspense as a man would feel before the rush of a
silent locomotive, sure to kill him if he does not see it, before the
rush of many silent locomotives which come while he sleeps, while he
eats, perhaps while he prays.

And constantly in the pilot records is this laconic entry: "No. 8 run
over and sunk; all hands lost." "No. 11 run over and sunk; one man
saved, the rest lost." "Pilot-boat _Columbia_ cut down by a liner; ten
men lost." No chance for heroic struggle here, no death with dramatic
setting and columns in the papers, but a stupid, blundering execution
while the men rest helpless on weary bunks, lulled by the surging
sea--"run over and sunk."

II

WHICH SHOWS HOW PILOTS ON THE ST. LAWRENCE FIGHT THE ICE-FLOES

NO study of pilot life can be complete without mention of the river
pilot who has to face perils in the rapids not a whit less real than
those faced by his brother pilot on the sea. I got my first glimpse of
the river pilot, oddly enough, in frozen December time, when even that
great waterway of northern America--I mean the St. Lawrence--was all but
a solid bed of ice, not quite, however, and to that chance I owed a
glimpse of Canadian boatmen at the hazard of their winter work, which is
none the less interesting for being unfamiliar.

It was fifteen degrees below zero, just pleasant Christmas weather in
Quebec, and the old river of saintly fame was grinding along with its
gorge of ice, streaming along under a dazzle of sun, steaming up little
clouds of frozen water-vapor, low-hanging and spreading over it like
tumbled fleece in patches of shine and shadow, quite a balloon effect, I
fancied, as I came down the cliff.

In a tug-boat office at the river's edge, chatting around a stove, yet
bundled thickly as if no stove were there, I found some half dozen
sharp-glancing men, who might have been actors in New York or noblemen
in Russia (I judge by the fineness of their furs), but were pilo