I looked aft, and perceived my future master talking with the captain of the vessel.  Philip Bramble was a spare man, about five feet seven inches high, he had on his head a low-crowned tarpaulin hat, a short P-jacket (so called from the abbreviation of pilot’s jacket) reached down to just above his knees.  His features were regular, and, indeed, although weatherbeaten, they might be termed handsome.  His nose was perfectly straight, his lips thin, his eyes gray and very keen; he had little or no whiskers, and, from his appearance and the intermixture of gray with his brown hair, I supposed him to be about fifty years of age.  In one hand he held a short clay pipe, into which he was inserting the forefinger of the other, as he talked with the captain.  At the time that he was pointed out to me by the second mate he was looking up aloft; I had, therefore, time to make the above observations before he cast his eyes down and perceived me, when I immediately went aft to him.

“I suppose you are Tom Saunders?” said he, surveying me from head to foot.

I replied in the affirmative.

“Well, Anderson has given you a good character, mind you don’t lose it.  D’ye think you’ll like to be a pilot?”

“Yes,” replied I.

“Have you sharp eyes, a good memory, and plenty of nerve?”

“I believe I’ve got the two first, I don’t know about the other.”

“I suppose not, it hasn’t been tried yet.  How far can you see through a fog?”

“According how thick it is.”

“I see you’ve a glass there:  tell me what you make of that vessel just opening from Blackwall Reach.”

“What, that ship?”

“Oh, you can make it out to be a ship, can you, with the naked eye?  Well, then, you have good eyes.”

I fixed my glass upon the vessel, and, after a time, not having forgotten the lessons so repeatedly given me by Spicer, I said, “She has no colors up, but she’s an Embden vessel by her build.”

“Oh,” said he, “hand me the glass.  The boy’s right; and a good glass, too.  Come, I see you do know something—­and good knowledge, too, for a pilot.  It often saves us a deal of trouble when we know a vessel by her build; them foreigners sail too close to take pilots.  Can you stand cold?  Have you got a P-jacket?”

“Yes, father bought me one.”

“Well, you’ll want it this winter, for the wild geese tell us that it will be a sharp one.  Steady, starboard!”

“Starboard it is.”

“D’ye know the compass?”

“No.”

“Well, stop till we get down to Deal.  Now, stand by me, and keep your eyes wide open; for, d’ye see, you’ve plenty to larn, and you can’t begin too soon.  We must square the mainyard, captain, if you please,” continued he, as we entered Blackwall Reach.  “What could make the river so perverse as to take these two bends in Limehouse and Blackwall Reaches, unless to give pilots trouble, I can’t say.”