Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/250

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AFE over the Bar!" remarked the pilot of the Columbia, as the good vessel rounded Lighthouse Point and headed for Astoria, one fine morning late in the fifties. The tone implied much more than the words to the half-dozen passengers that heard it, for it was midwinter and a "rough bar."

The pilot of the ship is to most people a very attractive person; the position he holds while on duty makes him the superior of the captain, who has heretofore held all the honors, and been a little king. When the pilot takes charge the captain shrinks into quite a common personage, and we feel as though he had dropped down to our level, and could be approached, and even spoken to, without that particular reverence hitherto accorded him; and if he talked back we should feel as though he had lost his power to crush us into utter insignificance as before.

The Columbia River bar had probably the worst reputation of any on the Pacific Coast, but when our pilot "took the ship," our fears vanished, for he appeared a very monarch—as he stood fully six feet six, and well proportioned; beside, his reputation for skill and careful handling of ships was the best;—so he was a man very much looked up to.