STEAMSHIPS AND SUBSIDIES 217 



hension among my friends lest the hurricane had 

 proved disastrous to us. I wanted to reassure 

 them as early as possible and determined to meet 

 them in the lower bay from a pilot boat. There 

 was one difficulty about this. On her outward 

 trip the Crescent City had carried away her pilot, 

 rough water having made it too difficult to put 

 him off. The boat was likely to arrive on the 

 night of the fourteenth and as she had a pilot 

 aboard would not be on the lookout for another. 

 That made it necessary for the boat I was on to 

 get in the path of every incoming steamer ready 

 to compel it to stop. We cruised well down in 

 the lower bay all through the afternoon and night 

 of the 14th of February. It was bitterly cold 

 with half a gale of wind and that pilot boat 

 bucked like a bronco and rolled like a porpoise as 

 her course was changed for every speck on the 

 horizon or light that gleamed through the dark- 

 ness. 



For forty years the memory of the temperature 

 that night on the deck of the pilot boat has repre- 

 sented my conception of the cold of interstellar 



