ts here,
lower-river pilots who, as one of them assured me, are vastly more
important than the upper-river kind.

I learned also from one who wore a coat of yellowish-gray skins with
otter trimmings that they were a belated company, who would start
shortly for Orleans Island across the ice. That was Orleans Island there
to the left. No, it did not seem far, but I might find it far enough if
I tried to get there. At this they all laughed.

Meekly I sat down, as was befitting, and listened to the talk. They
conversed in bad French or worse English, and were most of them, strange
to say, Scotchmen who had never seen Scotland and never
would--Douglasses and Browns and McGregors, who couldn't pronounce their
own names, but could take a liner to the gulf, day or night, through the
reefs of Crane Island, past the menacing twin Pilgrims, by windings and
dangers, safe down to sea.

I asked the man what they were going to Orleans Island for, and he
explained that they lived there through the winter months--they and
other pilots, many others. It was a pilot colony, set out in midstream.
Yes, it was cut off from the land, quite cut off; they liked it so.
Sometimes they didn't come ashore for weeks; it was not exactly fun
fighting those ice-floes. And they all laughed again; well, not exactly!

Meantime several jolly little cutters, no higher than cradles, had
jingled up with more men in furs and one woman. Also boxes and bundles.

"Pilots?" I asked.

The man nodded.

"And the woman?"

"Dees lady, pilot's wife. She been seek." And he went on in a jargon
that is charming, but not for imitation, to explain that they would lay
the sick lady in the bottom of the boat and pile coats over her and
around her until it was tolerably sure she couldn't freeze. From the way
he spoke one would fancy they were about to start for the North Pole,
but I presently understood that this two-mile ice journey over the
crackling St. Lawrence--the crackling comes from the ice-crust breaking
as the tide drops under it--is about as hard a test of men's endurance
as any Arctic performance.

They were all gathered now save one, whose cutter tarried still. He was
a good pilot, but overfond of the convivial glass, and was no doubt this
very moment in some uproarious company, forgetful that the start was to
be sharp on the hour. Well, they would give him ten minutes more, say
fifteen minutes, _pauvre garcon_.

Then they fell to discussing winter navi