AND DIGNITY OF PILOTING.

137

best. His movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he
received commands from nobody, he promptly resented even the
merest suggestions. Indeed, the law of the United States forbade
him to listen to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that
the pilot necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than any-
body could tell him. So here was the
novelty of a king without a keeper, an
absolute monarch who "was absolute in
sober truth and not by a fiction of words.
• VERY   BRIEF  AUTHORITY.^1

I have seen a boy of eighteen
taking a great steamer serenely
into what seemed almost certain
destruction, and the aged captain
standing mutely by, filled with apprehension but powerless to
interfere. His interference, in that particular instance, might
have been an excellent thing, but to permit it would have been to
establish a most pernicious precedent. It will easily be guessed,
considering the pilot's boundless authority, that he was a great