An Unqualified Pilot by Rudyard Kipling — Read

_This tale is founded on something that happened a good many years ago in the Port of Calcutta, before wireless telegraphy was used on ships, and men and boys were less easy to catch when once they were in a ship. It is not meant to show that anybody who thinks he would like to become eminent in his business can do so at a moment's notice; but it proves the old saying that if you want anything badly enough and are willing to pay the price for it, you generally get it. If you don't get what you want it is a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price._

Almost any pilot will tell you that his work is much more difficult than you imagine; but the Pilots of the Hugli know that they have one hundred miles of the most dangerous river on earth running through their hands-the Hugli between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal-and they say nothing. Their service is picked and sifted as carefully as the bench of the Supreme Court, for a judge can only hang the wrong man, or pass a bad law; but a careless pilot can lose a ten-thousand-ton ship with crew and cargo in less time than it takes to reverse her engines.