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