pilot’s trade is at hand.  Perhaps the night is pitchy dark, with a gale blowing and a heavy sea on:  but the pilot slips on his shore clothes and his derby hat—­it is considered unprofessional to wear anything more nautical—­and makes ready to board.  The little schooner runs up to leeward of where the great liner, with her long rows of gleaming portholes, lies rolling heavily in the sea.  Sharp up into the wind comes the midget, and almost before she has lost steerage way a yawl is slid over the side, the pilot and two oarsmen tumble into it, and make for the side of the steamship.  To climb a rope-ladder up the perpendicular face of a precipice thirty feet high on an icy night is no easy task at best; but if your start is from a boat that is being tossed up and down on a rolling sea, if your precipice has a way of varying from a strict perpendicular to an overhanging cliff, and then in an instant thrusting out its base so that the climber’s knees and knuckles come with a sharp bang against it, while the next moment he is dropped to his shoulders in icy sea-water, the difficulties of the task are naturally increased.  The instant the pilot puts his feet on the ladder he must run up it for dear life if he would escape a ducking, and lucky he is if the upward roll does not hurl him against the side of the ship with force enough to break his hold and drop him overboard.  Sometimes in the dead of winter the ship is iced from the water-line to the rail, and the task of boarding is about equivalent to climbing a rolling iceberg.  But whatever the difficulty, the pilot meets and conquers it—­or else dies trying.  It is all in the day’s work for them.  Accidents come in the form of boats run down by careless steamers, pilots crushed against the side or thrown into the sea by the roll of the vessel, the foundering of the pilot-boat or its loss on a lee shore; but still the ranks of the pilots are kept full by the admission to a long apprenticeship of boys who are ready to enter this adventurous and arduous calling.  Few occupations require a more assiduous preparation, and the members of but few callings are able to guard themselves so well against the danger of over-competition.  Nevertheless the earnings of the pilots are not great.  They come under the operation of the rule already noted, that the more dangerous a calling is, the less are its rewards.  Three thousand dollars a year is a high income for a pilot sailing out of New York harbor, and even this is decreasing as the ships grow bigger and fewer.  Nor can he be at all certain as to what his income will be at any time, for the element of luck enters into it almost as much as into gambling.  For weeks he may catch only small ships, or, the worst ill-luck that can befall a pilot, he may get caught on an outbound ship and be carried away for a six weeks’ voyage, during which time he can earn nothing.  But the pilot, like the typical sailor of whatever grade, is inured to hard luck and accustomed to danger.