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“Well, now and again,” answered the cook, with the vaguest suggestion of a twinkle in his eye. “It’s purty rough sometimes in winter.”

“How long do you stay out?”

“Sometimes three, sometimes five days, sometimes we get rid of all seven pilots the first day—there’s no telling. It’s all ’cording to how the steamers come in.”

“So we may be out a week?”

“About that. Maybe ten days.”

We went on deck. It was warm and bright. Some sailors from the fore-hatch were scrubbing down the deck, which dried white and warm as fast as they swabbed off the water. Wide-winged gulls were circling high and low among the ships of the harbor. On Staten Island many a little curl of smoke rose from the chimneys of white cottages.

That evening the crew of five men kept quietly to their quarters and slept. The moon shone clear until ten, when the barometer suddenly fell and clouds came out of the east. By cock-crow it was raining, and by morning it was drizzling and cold.

The pilots appeared one after another. They came out to the edge of the cotton wharf through the mist and rain, and waved a handkerchief as a signal that a boat should be sent ashore for them. One or two, failing to attract the immediate attention of the crew, resorted to the expedient of calling out: “Schooner, Ahoy!” in voices which partook of some of the stoutness of the sea.