A fine, sunny, clear day, Watson's Bay, and the pilot steamer Captain Cook, in which we are bound for a short cruise, lying quietly at her buoy. In answer to a signal a boat puts off, and in a few more minutes we are on the steamer's deck; in two more, after a cordial welcome from Captain Chudleigh, the "Cook" glides gently out to sea, through the broad gateway of the Port. It is an ideal day; blue water and blue sky; the great, weather-worn rocks that guard the portal of the harbor glow warmly with patches of rich, red color, while around their feet, for there is a swell on, plays a creaming fringe of foam. Coasting steamers and ketches are coming and going; but nothing big in the way of inward-bound ships is as yet in sight, which fact is rather disappointing, inasmuch as we have come to see for ourselves what the routine of pilot-life is like. But later on comes compensation.
The men are busy cleaning and painting, and the skipper takes the wheel and talks—talks well and entertainingly, as one of the "great and noble craft of the seafarer" to his aforetime brethren. Meanwhile, he handles his ship like a top, takes us in and out, to and fro, right to the edge of the white water, round the grim North Head, and back past the "Gap," and the spot where the fated Dunbar went to her doom. Aft, a silent, brown-faced pilot paces, with regular quarter-deck steps, and an expectant eye glancing every now and again towards the signal staff on the South Head.
"Regular picnic work this piloting business," one remarks tentatively, voicing the opinion of "the man in the street."
樂天KOBO
