The Pilot
By JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Condensation by ALFRED S. CLARK ON a late afternoon of a winter's day during the American Revolution, a rakish schooner and a majestic frigate anchored well inside a little bay on the northeastern coast of England. A whaleboat drove shoreward, a young officer scrambled up the steep cliffs, and a few minutes later a mysterious stranger was transferred to the frigate's deck. He answered to the name of "Mr. Gray" and was said to be merely a pilot, but he was greeted with surprising deference.
For no ordinary man would these vessels have ventured so near that coast of sandbars and hidden rocks. The wind was a mere ruffle of air. But the incessant mutter of the long, slow waves foretold that a storm was brewing. Ever more fitfully and faintly blew the land breeze; the mutter of the waters grew deeper. Only here and there did a few stars twinkle between the fast gathering clouds. It was time to beat out to open sea, if it were not even now too late. Men swarmed aloft and hung upon the yards; sails fluttered out; the anchor was pulled in; the frigate gathered headway. Then the faint breeze died. The spread of canvas hung useless; the currents drove the ship shoreward.
With a roar the wind came suddenly from the east. White spray dashed from the bow. Yet the pilot paced the quarter-deck, seemingly oblivious to danger. But open water was far ahead and suddenly from the forecastle came that dreaded cry, "Breakers! Breakers dead ahead!" The pilot shook off his trance of thought. His orders thundered forth, sailors sprang hither and thither at his bidding, the frigate swung about at his cry of "Hold on everything!" Tortuously she picked her way through the twisting channels, in darkness amid the howlings of the great winds.
She shivered from bow to stern as a hundred men loosed the huge mainsail. The jib was torn free with a crash like a cannon's blast, but the big sail held and the frigate bowed like a reed in the wind. White foam showed dimly upon both sides, but the pilot kept the ship, as by a miracle, within a narrow ribbon of dark water. He took the wheel himself. Time and again the frigate seemed to have reeled free from peril; time and again she plunged anew toward a welter of white water. But she drove ever on and at last she rode the great waves of the open sea.