Islands, and the sealing regions.  The outlawry of a great part of the seal trade, and the consequent heavy profits of those who are able to make one or two successful cruises uncaught by officers of the law, have attracted thither the reckless and desperate characters of every sea, and with these the revenue cutters have to cope.  Yet so diversified are the duties of this service that the revenue officers may turn from chasing an illicit sealer to go to the rescue of whalers nipped in the ice, or may make a cruise along the coast to deliver supplies from the Department of Education to mission schools along Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, or to carry succor to a party of miners known to be in distress.  The rapid development of Alaska since the discoveries of gold has greatly added to the duties of this fleet.

[Illustration:  REVENUE CUTTER]

The revenue service stands midway between the merchant service and the navy.  It may almost be said that the officers engaged in it suffer the disadvantages of both forms of sea service without enjoying the advantages of either.  Unlike navy officers, they do not have a “retired list” to look forward to, against the time when they shall be old, decrepit, and unfit for duty.  Congress has, indeed, made provision for placing certain specified officers on a roll called “permanent waiting orders,” but this has been but a temporary makeshift, and no officer can feel assured that this provision will be made for him.  Promotion, too, while quite as slow as in the navy, is limited.  The highest officer in the service is a captain, his pay $2500 a year—­but a sorry reward for a lifetime of arduous labor at sea, during which the officer may have been in frequent peril of his life, knowing all the time that for death in the discharge of duty, the Government will pay no pension to his heirs unless the disaster occurred while he was “cooperating with the navy.”  In one single year the records of the revenue service show more than one hundred lives saved by its activity, without taking into consideration those on vessels warned away from dangerous points by cutters.  Yet neither in pay, in provision for their old age, or for their families in case of death met in the discharge of duty, are the revenue officers rewarded by the Government as are navy officers, while public knowledge and admiration for the service is vastly less than for the navy.  It is a curious phenomenon, and yet one as old at least as the records of man, that the professional killer—­that is to say, the officer of the army or navy—­has always been held in higher esteem socially, and more lavishly rewarded, than the man whose calling it is to save life.