Formerly, If Your Boat Got Away From You,
On A Black Night, And Broke For The Woods, It Was An
Anxious time with
you; so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidified
darkness in a narrow
Chute; but all that is changed now - you flash out
your electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of an
eye, and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and
George Ritchie have charted the crossings and laid out the courses by
compass; they have invented a lamp to go with the chart, and have
patented the whole. With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with
considerable security, and with a confidence unknown in the old days.
With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty of daylight
in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed, and a chart and
compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of water, is
now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage, and is hardly more than
three times as romantic.
And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the Anchor
Line have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him the bigger
wages of the two. This was going far, but they have not stopped there.
They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post, and stand his
watch clear through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the
shore.
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