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And as though the fresh fierce hungriness had passed from that small heathen's soul into my own, that day I again became a reporter of things to be seen in the port of New York. Back into the dockshed I went, and all up and down and in and out among piles of strange and odorous stuffs. And once more I felt the wonder of this modern ocean world.
Another whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal heaps and the lapping water.
Presently he went into the dockshed on his unending quest of "the punch." And left to myself I got thinking. What did Paris know about us? De Maupassant's methods wouldn't do here. I noticed two painters in overalls at work on that large freighter. With long brooms that they held in both hands they were slapping a band of crude yellow paint along her scarred and rusted side.
Battered and worn from the day's impressions I wanted to be alone and to think. I made my way in and out among trucks and around a dockshed out to a slip. It was filled with barges, tugs and floats jammed in between the two big vessels that loomed one at either pier. It was a dark jumble of spars and masts, derricks, funnels and cabin roofs, all shadowy and silent.
I came around by the foot of the slip and walked rapidly up the dockshed toward one of its wide hatchways. The singing had stopped, but as I drew close a rough voice broke the silence: "Sing it again, Paddy!" I looked out.
From these and from the tenements came pouring angry throngs of men. And out of the hubbub I caught the words, "They're bringing in the scabs! By boat!" Past a watchman that I knew I ran into a dockshed and out to the open end of the dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene.
"Get up and get dressed and run for a doctor. Will you, son? I'm in a hell of a hole!" "What's the matter!" "My woman is havin' a baby, that's what," he answered fiercely. "We wasn't expectin' it so soon! An' there ain't a single doctor in miles! But there's a night watchman with a 'phone down there in the dockshed!" "All right, old man, I'll do my best."
That was what I needed, the broom! All at once the harbor took hold of me hard. And exulting in its bigness, the bold raw splattering bigness of my native Yankee land, "Now for some glory stories," I said. I went into the dockshed, and there I stayed right through until night, till my mind was limp and battered from the rush of new impressions.
It was the universal port-smell the world over, and Uncle William took it in in leisurely whiffs as he watched the play of life in the dockshed the backing of horses and the shouting of the men, the hollow sound of hoofs on the worn planks and the trundling hither and thither of boxes and barrels and bales. He was in no hurry to leave the dock. It was a part of the journey the sense of leisure.
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