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Furthermore, I saw no reason why we should plan for terrible emergencies which might never arrive. His answer was that we were military pilots in training for combat machines. We had no right to ignore the grimness of the business ahead of us. If we did, so much the worse for us when we should go to the front.
But this also is the fiction side of the story. Samuel Clemens was more than twenty-one when he set out on the "Paul Jones," and in a way was familiar with the trade of piloting. Hannibal had turned out many pilots. An older brother of the Bowen boys was already on the river when Sam Clemens was rolling rocks down Holliday's Hill.
Fuller fought manfully, responding to the fire of the enemy's boats with his twenty-fours, and repulsing the riflemen on either bank with his field piece. His pilots were killed and he had an arm broken, but he worked the wheel with his feet, backing up the bayou, as from her great length the boat could not be turned in the narrow channel.
There was a barroom in front and a dancing room in the rear. The place was filled with sailors, steamboat captains and pilots, traders, roisterers, clerks, hackmen, and undescribed characters. Women mingled with the men and drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud colors. Their faces were rouged.
The other Boches put their noses down and turn east. We follow until we find it impossible to catch them up, whereupon we make for home. The trenches are now passed, and our aerodrome is quite near. The strained nerve-tension snaps, the air seems intoxicatingly light. Pilots and observers munch chocolate contentedly or lift up their voices in songs of Blighty.
It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventful career. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There were dozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead for the channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always these skillful pilots of ours found a way through.
Now and again Gaud met passers-by, sea-folk, who could be seen a long way off, over the bare country, outlined and magnified against the high sea-line. Pilots or fishers, seeming to watch the great sea, in passing her wished her good-day. Broad sun-burnt faces were theirs, manly and determined under their easy caps.
I reached the log-but in which the pilots lived, and saw them start with their boat across the bar, board the steamer, and then return. Ashlock was at his old post at the steering-oar, with two ladies, who soon came to the landing, having passed through a very heavy surf, and I was presented to one as Mrs.
Moreover, the English and the Netherlanders knew the coasts, currents, tides, shallows, quicksands, ports, better than did the pilots of any fleets that the King could send thither. Thus, having his back assured, the enemy would meet them in front at a disadvantage.
"The pilots have been crucified after having undergone frightful tortures, rather than pilot the fleet of Caesar along the coast of Brittany." "To make them undergo torture, and death on the cross," flashed back Meroë, "is that loyalty! Would you still hesitate? Will you still speak of 'treachery'?" Albinik answered not a word, but in the dark he pressed his companion's hand.
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