knew just exactly how much water they would
find at each place; and they knew the whole harbor so well that they
could tell, almost, where every stone, of the size of a hat, was on the
bottom of it. In the year 1820, John Wilson was one of these pilots, and
he lived at Winthrop. Winthrop was a convenient place for a pilot to
live in, for it is on a sort of a point that bends around, so that it is
outside of Boston Harbor.

Now John Wilson's house was where he could see, from the windows of a
room upstairs, far out to sea. He could have seen Provincetown, on the
end of Cape Cod, if it hadn't been so far away that it was hidden by
the roundness of the world; and there was nothing, except the ocean and
the ships that sailed on it, between him and Europe. On clear days he
was apt to sit at his upper window, looking out over the ocean and
smoking. And whenever he saw the upper sails of some vessel beginning to
show, far away, over the waters of Massachusetts Bay, he would hurry off
to his sloop, that always lay ready at the wharf, just below; and he
would tell the man who was pottering about on the sloop, and who was
named Joe, that there was a vessel coming up and that he had better stir
his stumps. For he thought that it was the ship _Dawn_. Or, perhaps, it
was the brig _Sally Ann_ or the _Coromandel_, or the ship _Pactolys_, or
the _Savannah_, or the _Augusta Ramsay_, or the brig _Industry_. For
John Wilson knew every vessel that sailed from Boston so well that he
could tell a vessel's name as soon as he caught sight of her upper
sails.

Then Joe would hurry and John Wilson would hurry and they would sail
down to meet that vessel. And John Wilson, if he was the first pilot to
get to the vessel, which he generally was, would climb aboard, leaving
Joe to sail the sloop alone; and he would take command of the vessel and
pilot her safely in, through the channel, to her wharf.

But, if it was foggy or hazy, so that John Wilson could not see the
sails of vessels far off, over the water, even with his long glass, he
and Joe would sail back and forth before the entrance to Boston Harbor.
Sometimes there would be three or four pilot boats sailing back and
forth, waiting for the ships to come in; and, when they sighted a ship,
it would be a race to see which boat would get to her first.

One afternoon, in the late summer, John Wilson sat at his upper window,
smoking and looking out at the gulls. His long glass lay on another
c