is snapped, the voyage now really begun.
There may be masters who affect a fine aloofness when the pilot boards
them on incoming, others who preserve a detached air--but there are few
who do not feel relief in answering the cheerful hail--'All well aboard,
Captain?'--as the pilot puts a cautious testing foot on the side-ladder.
Here is the voyage practically at an end with the coming of an expert in
local navigation. The anxiety of a landfall is over. The channel buoys,
port hand and starboard, stretch out ahead to mark definite limits to
shoal and sandbank; familiar landmarks loom up through the drift of
distant city haze; the outer lightship curtsies in the swell, beckoning
us into port to resume the brief round of longshore life. After a
lengthy period of silence and detachment, we are again in touch with the
affairs of the beach; the news of the day and of weeks past is told to
us in intervals of steering orders--sailor news, edited by a competent
understanding of our professional interests. The tension of the voyage
is unconsciously relaxed. We are in good hands. The engines turn
steadily and we come in from sea.
If the pilot was ever a welcome attendant in the peaceful days, his
services in the war earn for him an even warmer appreciation. War
measures in their operation have rendered our seaports difficult of
entry. The buoyage has, perhaps, been reset in the interval of a
voyage's absence. Boom defences and examination areas exist, channels
are closed or obstructed; certain of the lightships or floating marks
may be withdrawn on short warning. Amid all our doubts and
uncertainties, we look for the one assured sea-mark on the unfamiliar
bars--the red-and-white emblem of a pilot vessel on her boarding
station. Undeterred by the risk of mine or torpedo while marking time on
their cruising ground, the pilots are constantly on the alert to board
the incoming vessels as they approach from seaward. No state of the
weather drives the cutter from her station to seek shelter in safer
waters. If the seas are too high for boatwork, she steams ahead and
offers a lead to a quieter section of the fairway where boarding may be
attempted.
Turn and turn of the pilots in service can no longer be effected. The
even balances of their roster (that worked so well in peace-time) have
been rudely disturbed by war. The steady round of duty, in which every
man knew the date of his relief, has given place to a state of 'feast
and fam
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