The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-02-09

ship. He has beautiful rooms in the
port office at Calcutta, and generally
keeps himself to the society of his own
profession, for though the telegraph
reports the more important soundinSs
of the river daily there is much to be
learned between trip and trip.
Some millions of tons of shipping
must find their way to and from Cal
cutta each twelve-month, and unless
the Hugh We're watched as closely as
men watch the Atlantic cables there is
a fear that it might silt up as it has
silted up round the old Dutch and
Portuguese ports twenty and thirty
miles behind Calcutta. So the port Of
flee sounds and scours and dredges and
builds spurs and devices for coaXing
currents and labels all the buoys with
their proper letters and attends to the
semaphores and the lights and the
drum, ball and cone storm signals, and
the pilots of the Hugh do the rest, but
in spite of all the care the Hugh swal-
lows a ship or two every year.
When Martin Treyor had followed
this life from his boyhood; when he
had risen to be a senior pilot entitled to
bring up to Calcutta the big ships
drawing over twenty-four feet that
can (or could till few years ago. only
pass by special arrangement; when he
had talked nothing but Hugh and pi-
lotage all his life, he was exceedingly
indignant that his only son should de-
eide upon following his fathers profess
sion. Mrs Trevor had died when the
boy was child, and as he grew older
Trevor, in the intervals of his business,
noticed that the lad was very often by
the river side--no nice place for a boy.
Once, when he asked him if he could
make anything out of the shipping,
little Trevor replied by reeling off the
list of all the house-hags in sight at the
moorings.
You'll come to a bad end, JIM" said
Trevor. Little boys haven't any busi-
ness to know house-hags."
"Oh, Pedro at the Sailors home
taught me. He says you can't begin
too early"
'At what, please?
plotting. I'm nearly II now and
and l know where all the shipping in
the river is, and ! know what there
was yesterday over the Msyapur bar,
and I've been down to Diamond har-
bor-oh, hundred times-and I've
You'll go to school, son, and Learn
what they'll teach you. and you'll turn
out better than a pilot" said his father,
but he might just as well have told a
shovel-nosed porpoise Of the river to
come ashore and begin life as hen.
Jim held his tongue-Ee noticed that
all the best pilots in the port Office did
that-and devoted his young attention
and all his spare time and money to the
river he loved.
Trevor's son became as we'll known
as the Bankshall itself, and the port
police let him inspect their launches,
and the tug boat captains had always
a place for him at table, and the
mates of the big steam dredges used
to show him how the machinery
worked, and there were certain native
rowboats that Jim practically owned
and he extended his patronage to the
rail that runs to Diamond harbor, forty
miles down the river. In the old days
nearly all the East India company's
ships used to discharge at Diamond
harbor on account of the shoals above,
but now ships go straight up to CAL
cutta, and they have only some moor
ings for vessels in distress there, and a
telegraph service and a harbor master,
who was Jim's intimate friend. He
would sit in the Office and listen to the
sounding of the shoals as they were
reported every day, and attend to the
movements of the steamers up and
down Jim always felt he had lost
something IL a boat got in or out of the
river without his knowing it), and
when the big liners, with their rows of
burning port holes, tied up In Diamond
harbor for the night Jim would row
from one ship to the other through
the sticky hot air and the buzzing mos
quitos and listen respectfully as the
pilots conferred together. Once, for a
treat. his father took him down clear
out to the sand heads and the pilot
brig, and Jim was joyfully sea sick as
she tossed and pitched in the bay. So
he had to go down three or four times