This led to a discussion of magnetic sand, and it was edifying to see how well informed these pilots are in the latest advances of science.
They set forth, for example, the clear advantage of literally pouring oil upon furious waters, and were all agreed that the foam of a spent wave, spreading around a life-boat, will often protect her against a succeeding wave. The foam seems to act like oil in preventing a driving wind from tossing up the surface—getting a hold on it, one might say.
"Taking it altogether," I asked, "do you men regard a pilot's life as very dangerous?"
It was Breed who answered: "Taking it altogether," said he, "I regard a pilot's life as about the most dangerous going. Here's a little thing to show you how fast they go, these lives of pilots. When I was received as apprentice there were eighteen other apprentices ahead of me, and the only way we could get to be pilots was through somebody dropping out, for there were never more than just so many licenses issued. Well, when I had been an apprentice for three years the whole eighteen had been received as pilots, and there were seven vacancies besides. That makes twenty-five dead pilots in three years, and most of 'em killed. Why, in the blizzard of 1888 alone ten of our boats were wrecked."
At this there was a solemn shaking of heads, then stories of the taking off of this or that gallant fellow. There was Van Pelt, one of the strongest men in the service—a pilot from a family of pilots—killed by the stroke of a tow-line—a big hawser that snapped across his 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.
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.