iel Boone, and some
of the incidents of the story read like real life. One of Cooper's most
famous descriptions--that of the prairie on fire--occurs in this book--a
scene excelled only by the description of the panther-fight in _The
Pioneers_, or the combat between Deerslayer and his foe.

Cooper began his series of sea novels by the publication of _The Pilot_
in 1824, and stands as the creator of this department of fiction. He was
the first novelist to bring into fiction the ordinary, every-day life of
the sailor afloat, whether employed on a merchant vessel or fighting
hand to hand in a naval encounter. Scott's novel, _The Pirate_, had been
criticised by Cooper as the evident work of a man who had never been at
sea, and to prove how much better an effect could be produced by one
familiar with ocean life he began his story, _The Pilot_.

[Illustration: COOPER READING TO AN OLD SHIPMATE.]

The period of the story is the American Revolution, and the hero was
that famous adventurer John Paul Jones, introduced under another name.
It was such a new thing to put into fiction the technicalities of ship
life, to describe the details of an evolution in a naval battle, and to
throw in as background the vast and varying panorama of sea and sky,
that Cooper, familiar as he was with ocean life, felt some doubt of his
success. In order to test his powers, he read one day to an old shipmate
that famous account of the passage of the ship through the narrow
channel in one of the thrilling chapters of the yet unfinished work. The
effect was all that Cooper could desire. The old sailor got into such a
fury of excitement that he could not keep his seat, but paced up and
down the room while Cooper was reading; in his excitement he was for a
moment living over again a stormy scene from his own life; and the
novelist laid down the manuscript, well pleased with the result of his
experiment. _The Pilot_ met with an instant success both in America and
Europe. As it was his first, so it is perhaps his best sea story. In it
he put all the freshness of reminiscence, all the haunting memories of
ocean life that had followed him since his boyhood days. It was
biographical in the same sense as _The Pioneers_, a part of the romance
of childhood drafted into the reality of after-life.

_Red Rover_, the next sea story, came out in 1828. Other novelists had
begun to write tales of the sea, but they were mere imitations of _The
Pilot_. In the _Red Rove