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By the rough seas I swear, fear for myself never wrung me so sore as for thy ship, lest, the rudder lost and the pilot struck away, those gathering waves might master it. Three wintry nights in the water the blustering south drove me over the endless sea; scarcely on the fourth dawn I descried Italy as I rose on the climbing wave.

Instead of going by the Persian Gulf, I travelled a considerable way overland, and finally embarked from a distant Indian port with a captain who meant to make a long voyage. And truly he did so, for we fell in with stormy weather which drove us completely out of our course, so that for many days neither captain nor pilot knew where we were, nor where we were going.

His warning to prepare for instant siege set all the young fire-eaters of our Habitation working like beavers to complete the French fort. The marquis took a hand at squaring timbers shoulder to shoulder with Allemand, the pilot; and La Chesnaye, the merchant prince, forgot to strut while digging up earthworks for a parapet. The leaven of the New World was working.

It was very hard for the little girl to keep quiet, for she could hear her father's voice, and that of Captain Starkweather, and loud commands in strange voices, and the sloop seemed to be moving this way and that as if it had lost its pilot. "We are captured by that English boat; I know we are," Anne whispered to herself. And that was really what had happened.

Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelve or thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day! The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoal place once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch it for him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to run it.

The hastily written story, sent away with no thought beyond the few dollars it might bring, sailed with a fair wind and a wise pilot at the helm into public favour, and came home heavily laden with an unexpected cargo of gold and glory.

"I 'm so fond of music, how can I help it? "I 'm talking about Syd." "Well, I 'm not." "You 'd better try for him." "I 'll think of it." "Oh, Polly, Polly, what are you coming to?" "A tumble into the street, apparently," answered Polly as she slipped a little on the step, and Tom stopped in the middle of his laugh to pilot her safely into the carriage, where Fanny was already seated.

"What is the matter with the captain? Did they not announce their confidence in him by coming aboard this steamer, and has he done anything to cause them to lose faith in his ability to pilot them safely through? Has he not brought them on their voyage thus far without accident?" I asked. "Oh, yes, certainly."

Every wave that struck the yacht hurled her near and nearer to the breakers; but the courage of the men continued indomitable, and promptly, with the most cheerful expressions, they performed any, the most perilous task allotted to them. "Ware her, pilot!" D called out to the principal pilot. The two pilots taking up the hint, consulted for an instant, and then that one to whom D had spoken, said,

The tactics of an air battle on a larger scale are much more complicated than those for single combats. A pilot must be prepared at every instant to change from the offensive to the defensive and back again, to take lightning decisions, and to extricate himself from one part of the fight and sweep away to another, if by so doing he can save a friend or destroy an enemy.