Rudyard Kipling

“ Once, for a treat, his father took him down clear out to the Sandheads and the pilot brig there, and Jim was happily sea-sick as she tossed and pitched in the Bay. The cream of life, though, was coming up in a tug or a police boat from Diamond Harbour to Calcutta, over the “James and Mary,” those terrible sands christened after a royal ship that they sunk two hundred years before. ”

“ He arrives in his best clothes, with a native servant or an assistant pilot to wait on him, and he behaves as a man should who can earn two or three thousand pounds a year after twenty years’ apprenticeship. He has beautiful rooms in the Port Office at Calcutta, and generally keeps himself to the society of his own profession, for though the telegraph reports the more important soundings of the river daily, there is much to be learned from brother pilots between each trip. ”

“ It was here (the tales sound much worse when they are told in the rush and growl of the muddy waters) that the Countess of Stirling, fifteen hundred tons, touched and capsized in ten minutes, and a two-thousand-ton steamer in two, and a pilgrim ship in five, and another steamer literally in one instant, holding down her men with the masts and shrouds as she lashed over. ”

“ Rich Chinamen will pay fancy prices for this service, and they have a superstition that the iron of steamships is bad for the spiritual health of their dead. Erh-Tze’s junk had crept up from Singapore, via Penang and Rangoon, to Calcutta, where Erh-Tze had been staggered by the Pilot dues. This time he was going out at a reduction with Jim, who, as Pedro kept telling him, was just as good as a pilot, and a heap cheaper. ”

“ The boat hooked on to the brig’s chains, and McEwan said, as he set foot on deck before Jim could speak, “Yon’s an enterprising cub o’ yours, Trevor. Ye’d better enter him in the regular business, or one o’ these fine days he’ll be acting as pilot before he’s qualified, and sinkin’ junks in the fairway. He fetched yon junk down last night. If ye’ve no other designs I’m thinkin’ I’ll take him as my cub, for there’s no denying he’s a resourceful lad—for all he’s an unlicked whelp.”
“That,” said Trevor, reaching for Jim’s left ear, “is something we can remedy,” and he led him below. ”

“ If I’d gone home last night instead of going to Pedro, I’d have met him. He must have got his ship quick, but—Father is a very quick man.” Then Jim reflected that they kept a piece of knotted rope on the pilot brig that stung like a wasp ”