Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-02-16

behaves as a man should who can earn
10000 a year after twenty years appren-
uceship. He has beautiful rooms In the
port office at Calcutta, and generally keeps
himself to the society of his own profess
sion. for though the telegraph reports the
more important soundings of the river
daily there is much to be learned between
trip and trip.
Some millions Of tons of shipping must
ind their way to and from Calcutta each
twelve-month, and unless the Hugh were
watched as closely as men watch the At
lantic cables there Is a fear that 1t might
silt I'D as IL has silted up round the old
Dutch and Portuguese ports twenty and
thirty miles behind Calcutta. So the port
off1ce sounds and scours and dredges and
builds spurs and devices for coaxtng cur
rents 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 swallows slip or two every
year.
When Martin Trevor had followed this
life from his boyhood: when ne had risen
20 be senior pilot entitled to bring up 10
Calcutta the big ships drawing over TWEEN
ty-four feet that can Cor could till few
years ago. only pass by special arrange.
ment; when he had talked nothing put
Hugh and pilotage all his life, he was ex-
ceedingly Indignant that his only son
should decide upon following his fathers
profession Mrs. Trevor had died when the
boy was a 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 IL he could make any
ming out of the shipping, little Trevor re-
Piled by Keeling off the list OF all the mousse
flags In sight at the mornings.
you'll come to a bad end, JIM" said
Trevor. Little boys haven't any business
to know house flags
"Oh. Pedro at the Sailors Home taught
begin
"At what. please"
"Piloting. I'm nearly fourteen now. and
and know where all the shipping In the
river Is, and I know what there was yes
terday over the Mayapur bar, and I've
been down to Diamond harbor-oh, hun
dI ed times-and I've
You'll go to school. son. and learn what
they'll teach you, and you'll turn out bet
ter than q pilot" said his father, but he
might just as well have told a shovel-nosed
porpoise of the river to some ashore and
he 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 well known as
the BankshaIl 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
dredgers used to show him how the ma
chinery worked, and there were certain
native rowboats that Jim practically own
ed; 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 Calcutta, and they have
only some mornings for vessels in dis
tress there, and a telegraph service and
harbor master. who was Jim's intimate
friend He would sit in the office and lis
Ten to the soundings of the shoals as they
were reported every day, and attend to
the movements of the steamers up and
down Oim always felt he had lost some
thing If a boat got IN or out of the river
without his knowing iD. and when the big
liners with their rows of burning port