The Boy Pilot of the Lakes; Or, Nat Morton's Perils

by Frank V. Webster

"Oh, I did so well I thought I'd take a vacation," and Nat related the incident of the day.

The boy's liking for the water seemed to have been born in him. Soon after his mother had died his father placed him in the care of a family in an inland city. The child seemed to pine away, and an old woman suggested he might want to be near the water, as his father had followed all his life a calling that kept him aboard boats. Though he did not believe much in that theory, Mr. Morton finally consented to place his son to board in Chicago. Nat at once picked up and became a strong, healthy lad.

As he grew older his father took him on short trips with him, so Nat grew to know and love the Great Lakes, as a sailor learns to know and love the ocean.

Soon Nat began asking questions about ships and how they were sailed. His father was a good instructor, and between his terms at school Nat learned much about navigation in an amateur sort of way.

Best of all he loved to stand in the pilot-house, where he was admitted because many navigators knew and liked Mr. Morton. There the boy learned something of the mysteries of steering a boat by the compass and by the lights on shore. He learned navigating terms, and, on one or two occasions, was even allowed to take the spokes of the great wheel in his own small hands.

In this way Nat gained a good practical knowledge of boats. Then came the sad day when he received the news of the death of his father. Though up to that time he had lived in comparative comfort, he now found himself very poor.

For though, as he told John Scanlon, his father had said something about financial matters being better after the delivery of the big load that was on the lumber barge on which he met his death, the boy was too young to understand it.

All he knew was that he had to leave his pleasant boarding place and go to live with a poor family—the Millers—who took compassion on the homeless lad.

Mr. Miller had made an effort to see if Mr. Morton had not left some little money, but his investigation resulted in nothing.

For about two years Nat had lived with the Millers, doing what odd jobs he could find. His liking for the water kept him near the lake, and he had never given up his early ambition to become a pilot some day, though that time seemed very far off.