Yet frequently this is out of the question. Then a “whip” is rigged beyond the end of a lee yard-arm, carrying a rope rove through a snatch-block, and having a noose at its end. The steamer slows her engines, or the ship heaves to, and the pilot-schooner, under perfect control, runs up under the lee of the big ship, as near as she dares in the gale. Then, just at the right instant, a man on the ship’s yard hurls the rope, it is caught by the schooner, the pilot slips one leg through the bowline-noose, and a second afterward the schooner has swept on and he is being hoisted up to the yard-arm, but generally not in time to save himself a good ducking in the coaming of some big roller. Going on shipboard in this fashion is not favorable to an imposing effect; nevertheless, the pilot is welcomed by both crew and passengers, who admire his courage and trust his skill, but smile at the high hat beloved of all pilots. Now the pilot is master—stands ahead of the captain even—and his orders are absolute law. He inspects the vessel to form his opinion of how she will behave, and then goes to the wheel or stands where best he can give his orders to the steersman and to the men in the fore-chains heaving the sounding lead. He must never abandon his post, he must never lose his control of the ship, or make a mistake as to its position in respect to the lee-shore, or fail to be equal to every emergency. If it is too dark and foggy and stormy to see, he must feel; and if he cannot do this he must have the faculty of going right by intuition. To fail is to lose his reputation if not his life. This is what is expected of pilots, and this is what they actually do in a hundred cases, the full details of any one of which would make a long and thrilling tale of adventurous fighting for life. It is to help pilots and navigators of all sorts to avoid the perils that beset them that governments not only spend large sums in surveying coasts and harbors, publishing charts and descriptions, and maintaining lighthouses and lightships, but mark out bars and channels with floating guides, and their borders with shore-beacons and “ranges,” to form so many finger-posts for the right road. Were it not for these sign-posts no ship could safely enter any commercial harbor in the world; and it will be valuable to quote somewhat from an article, with capital illustrations, written for “St. Nicholas” (March, 1896) by an officer of the United States Navy, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, since it describes how the long, winding approaches to one of the greatest ports of the world are marked out by day and by night—I mean the harbor of New York.