oice. Everybody knows the bronzed,
black-moustached, clear-speaking Native Cavalry officer. He exists
unnaturally in novels, and naturally on the Frontier. These men in the
big room have his cast of face so strongly marked that one marvels what
officers are doing by the river. "Have they come to book passages for
home?" "Those men? They're pilots. Some of them draw between two and
three thousand rupees a month. They are responsible for half-a-million
pounds' worth of cargo sometimes." They certainly are men, and they
carry themselves as such. They confer together by twos and threes, and
appeal frequently to shipping lists.

"_Isn't_ a pilot a man who always wears a pea-jacket and shouts through
a speaking-trumpet?" "Well, you can ask those gentlemen if you like.
You've got your notions from Home pilots. Ours aren't that kind exactly.
They are a picked service, as carefully weeded as the Indian Civil. Some
of 'em have brothers in it, and some belong to the old Indian army
families." But they are not all equally well paid. The Calcutta papers
echo the groans of the junior pilots who are not allowed the handling of
ships over a certain tonnage. As it is yearly growing cheaper to build
one big steamer than two little ones, these juniors are crowded out,
and, while the seniors get their thousands, some of the youngsters make
at the end of one month exactly thirty rupees. This is a grievance with
them, and it seems well-founded.

In the flats above the pilot's room are hushed and chapel-like offices,
all sumptuously fitted, where Englishmen write and telephone and
telegraph, and deft Babus for ever draw maps of the shifting Hugli. Any
hope of understanding the work of the Port Commissioners is thoroughly
dashed by being taken through the Port maps of a quarter of a century
past. Men have played with the Hugli as children play with a
gutter-runnel, and, in return, the Hugli once rose and played with men
and ships till the Strand Road was littered with the raffle and the
carcasses of big ships. There are photos on the walls of the cyclone of
'64, when the _Thunder_ came inland and sat upon an American barque,
obstructing all the traffic. Very curious are these photos, and almost
impossible to believe. How can a big, strong steamer have her three
masts razed to deck level? How can a heavy, country boat be pitched on
to the poop of a high-walled liner? and how can the side be bodily torn
out of a ship? The photos say that all th