and his owners will have trouble with the insurance companies.  So the law is acquiesced in, perhaps not very cheerfully, and there have grown up at each American port men who from boyhood have studied the channels until they can thread them with the biggest steamship in the densest fog and never touch bottom.  New York as the chief port has the largest body of pilots, and in the old days, before the triumph of steam, had a fleet of some thirty boats, trim little schooners of about eighty tons, rigged like yachts, and often outsailing the best of them.  In those days the rivalry between the pilots for ships was keen and the pilot-boats would not infrequently cruise as far east as Sable Island to lay in wait for their game.  That was in the era of sailing ships and infrequent steamers, and it was the period of the greatest mortality among the pilots; for staunch as their little boats were, and consummate as was their seamanship, they were not fitted for such long cruises.  The marine underwriters in those days used to reckon on a loss of at least one pilot-boat annually.  Since 1838 forty-six have been lost, thirteen going down with all on board.  In late years, however, changes in the methods of pilotage have greatly decreased the risks run by the boats.  When the great ocean liners began trying to make “record trips” between their European ports and Sandy Hook, their captains became unwilling to slow up five hundred miles from New York to take a pilot.  They want to drive their vessels for every bit of speed that is in them, at least until reported from Fire Island.  The slower boats, the ocean tramps, too, look with disfavor on shipping a pilot far out at sea, for it meant only an idler aboard, to be fed until the mouth of the harbor was reached.  So the rivalry between the pilots gave way to cooperation.  A steamer was built to serve as a station-boat, which keeps its position just outside New York harbor, and supplies pilots for the eight boats of the fleet that cruise over fixed beats a few score miles away.  But this change in the system has not so greatly reduced the individual pilot’s chance of giving up his life in tribute to Neptune, for the great peril of his calling—­that involved in getting from his pilot-boat to the deck of the steamer he is to take in—­remains unabated.

[Illustration:  THE EXCITING MOMENT IN THE PILOT’S TRADE]

Professional pride no less than hope of profit makes the pilot take every imaginable risk to get to his ship.  He draws no regular salary, but his fee is graduated by the draft of the vessel he pilots.  When a ship is sighted coming into port, the pilot-boat makes for her.  If she has a blue flag in her rigging, half way up, by day, she has a pilot aboard.  At night, the pilot-boats show a blue flare, by way of query.  If the ship makes no answer, she is known to be supplied, and passes without slowing up; but if in response to signal she indicates that she is in need of a pilot, the exciting moment in the