Captain Sol had the sails fixed so that the ship wouldn't go ahead and so did Captain Henry. And Captain Sol had a boat lowered and sailors got in, to row it, and he went over to make a call on Captain Henry. And he found that the Augusta Ramsay had been caught in a calm place, after that storm, because Captain Henry hadn't been willing to rout his men out at two o'clock in the morning; and she hadn't been able to get out of that calm place for nearly two weeks, but had stayed there, with her sails flapping against the masts, for all that long time. And Captain Henry said that it was a joke on him and bade Captain Sol good bye and wished him a good voyage home. But Captain Sol thought that it was no joke for the owners of the Augusta Ramsay.
Then he got into his boat again and went back to his ship. And the Augusta Ramsay fixed her sails so that she would go ahead, and so did the Industry. And they sailed away from each other; but Captain Sol had taken Captain Henry's letters.
THE PILOT STORY
nce upon a time there was a wide river that ran into the ocean, and beside it was a little city. And in that city was a wharf where great ships came from far countries. And a narrow road led down a very steep hill to that wharf, and anybody that wanted to go to the wharf had to go down the steep hill on the narrow road, for there wasn't any other way. And because ships had come there for a great many years and all the sailors and all the captains and all the men who had business with the ships had to go on that narrow road, the flagstones that made the sidewalk were much worn. That was a great many years ago.
The wharf was Captain Jonathan's and Captain Jacob's and they owned the ships that sailed from it; and, after their ships had been sailing from that wharf in the little city for a good many years, they changed their office to Boston. After that, their ships sailed from a wharf in Boston.
The channel into Boston Harbor was crooked and narrow and a captain had to know it very well to be able to take a ship in safely. A good many captains didn't like to risk it, even if they thought they did know the channel pretty well. So there were some men who made it their business to take vessels out of the harbor, that wanted to go out, and to bring vessels in, that wanted to come in. Those men were called harbor pilots, or just pilots. And they knew just exactly how much water they would find at each place; and they knew the whole harbor so well that they could tell, almost, where every stone, of the size of a hat, was on the bottom of it. In the year 1820, John Wilson was one of these pilots, and he lived at Winthrop. Winthrop was a convenient place for a pilot to live in, for it is on a sort of a point that bends around, so that it is outside of Boston Harbor.
Now John Wilson's house was where he could see, from the windows of a room upstairs, far out to sea. He could have seen Provincetown, on the end of Cape Cod, if it hadn't been so far away that it was hidden by the roundness of the world; and there was nothing, except the ocean and the ships that sailed on it, between him and Europe. On clear days he was apt to sit at his upper window, looking out over the ocean and smoking. And whenever he saw the upper sails of some vessel beginning to show, far away, over the waters of Massachusetts Bay, he would hurry off to his sloop, that always lay ready at the wharf, just below; and he would tell the man who was pottering about on the sloop, and who was named Joe, that there was a vessel coming up and that he had better stir his stumps. For he thought that it was the ship Dawn. Or, perhaps, it was the brig Sally Ann or the Coromandel, or the ship Pactolys, or the Savannah, or the Augusta Ramsay, or the brig Industry. For John Wilson knew every vessel that sailed from Boston so well that he could tell a vessel's name as soon as he caught sight of her upper sails.