was $1,640,000. For many years the service was a branch of the revenue
marine, and when in 1878 it was made a separate bureau, the former chief
of the revenue marine bureau was put at its head. The drill-masters for
the crews are chosen from the revenue service, as also are the inspectors.

[Illustration: LAUNCHING A LIFEBOAT THROUGH THE SURF]

The methods of work in the life-saving service have long been familiar,
partly because at each of the recurring expositions of late years, the
service has been represented by a model station and a crew which went
daily through all the operations of shooting a line over a stranded ship,
bringing a sailor ashore in the breeches-buoy or the life-car, and
drilling in the non-sinkable, self-righting surf-boat. Along the Atlantic
coast the stations are so thickly distributed that practically the whole
coast from Sandy Hook to Hatteras is continually under patrol by watchful
sentries. Night and day, if the weather be stormy or threatening,
patrolmen set out from each station, walking down the beach and keeping a
sharp eye out for any vessel in the offing. Midway between the stations
they meet, then each returns to his own post. In the bitter nights of
winter, with an icy northeaster blowing and the flying spray, half-frozen,
from the surf, driven by the gale until it cuts like a knife, the
patrolman's task is no easy one. Indeed, there is perhaps no form of human
endeavor about which there is more constant discomfort and positive danger
than the life-saving service. It is the duty of the men to defy danger, to
risk their lives whenever occasion demands, and the long records of the
service show uncounted cases of magnificent heroism, and none of failure
in the face of duty.

A form of seafaring which still retains many of the characteristics of the
time when Yankee sailors braved all seas and all weather in trig little
wooden schooners, is the pilot service at American ports, and notably at
New York. Even here, however, the inroads of steam are beginning to rob
the life of its old-time picturesqueness, though as they tend to make it
more certain that the pilot shall survive the perils of his calling, they
are naturally welcomed. Under the law every foreign vessel entering an
American port must take a pilot. If the captain thinks himself able to
thread the channel himself, he may do so; but nevertheless he has to pay
the regular pilot fee, and if the vessel is lost, he alone is responsibl