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Updated: May 4, 2025
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.
He was clear and distinct in every corroborative circumstance, and gave a short account of the singular way in which he had been recalled from his outward-bound voyage, and the terrible anxiety he had felt, as the pilot-boat had struggled home against the wind.
The wind was blowing briskly off shore, and the beautiful pilot-boat, with her wonderful spread of canvass, was cutting the water as a bird cleaves the air. She had been beating toward land, but, as she saw the steamer, she rounded to, gave way before the wind, worked toward the steamer's track on the windward side, and would soon run keel to keel with her. "Fetch your traps," said the captain.
De Guiche, who had been looking among the different boats for one stronger than the others, which might offer a chance of reaching the English vessels, perceiving the pilot-boat getting ready to start, said to Raoul: "Do you not think, Raoul, that intelligent and vigorous men, as we are, ought to be ashamed to retreat before the brute strength of wind and waves?"
Gambling is practiced everywhere. Tourists to and from Europe engage in draw-poker and other games of chance, while they make pools and lay wagers on the distance sailed per day, or the length of the voyage, and on the number of the pilot-boat that will first be hailed.
As soon as it is dark, you will return, keep the pilot-boat in readiness for my last despatch, with which you will meet the frigate Torche about midnight, as arranged on Thursday. All that and the signals you already understand. Wait for me by this tree, and I may go with you; but that will depend upon circumstances.
The treacherous figure "9," which Beardsley had caused to be painted on her sails, in the hope that merchant vessels would take her for a harmless pilot-boat, was not to be seen; all the black paint about her, from the heel of her bowsprit to the crosstrees, had given place to a bluish-white; and on both sides of her bow and over her cabin door the name Hattie appeared in large gilt letters.
Mease, the purser, appeared on the ladder. "Lunt has not come back with the pilot-boat, Carvel," said he. "I have volunteered for a battery, and am assigned to this. You are to report to the commodore." I thanked him, and climbed quickly to the quarterdeck.
Yet there was no sign that these men were prisoners, or acting by compulsion. No French boat was near them, no batteries there commanded their course, and the pilot-boat carried no prize-crew to direct reluctant labours. At the mouth of the river was a floating bridge, for the use of the forces on either side, and no boat could have passed it without permission.
Her complaint is an almost incessant nervous fever." The rest is known. The vessel sailed. Off Cape Hatteras, during a gale that swept the coast from Maine to Georgia, the pilot-boat went down, and not one escaped to tell the tale. The vessel was never heard of more. So perished this noble, gifted, ill-starred lady. The agonizing scenes that followed may be imagined.
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