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On the flagstaff gaff a boy hoisted a white flag over a red, which stood for "Run to Neal Island for shelter." That Captain Oleson had been expecting this signal was apparent by the celerity with which the shackles were knocked out of both anchor-chains. He slipped his anchors, leaving them buoyed to be picked up in better weather.
The narrow strip of dock-front, between the car-tracks and the water-line an unpaved strip of foot-trodden earth and rotting planks, on which lay enormous ship-anchors, anchor-chains in coils, piles of squared timber, and other maritime properties, stored here for years was now a seething mass of people completely hiding the things on which they stood.
As soon as they came inside their jibs weakened and fell, and the anchor-chains rattled from their bows. Before the dark hid them we could have counted sixty or seventy ships in the harbor, and as the night fell they improvised a little Venice under the hill with their lights, which twinkled rhythmically, like the lamps in the basin of St. Mark, between the Maine and New Hampshire coasts.
Beyond that again rose a range of mountain-peaks, and, stuck upon the loftiest peak of all, a tiny block-house. It rested on the brow of the mountain against the naked sky as impudently as a cracker-box set upon the dome of a great cathedral. As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines.
As the transport rode on her anchor-chains, the iron bars around her sides rose and sank and divided the landscape with parallel lines. From his cot the officer followed this phenomenon with severe, painstaking interest. Sometimes the wooden rail swept up to the very block-house itself, and for a second of time blotted it from sight.
But Naomi listened to every sound with eager intentness the light plash of the blue wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to unload the cargoes.
They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiræus rose dark mountains and headlands, at their foot lay a sprinkling of lights. “Salamis!” cried Glaucon, pointing. “Yonder are the ships of Hellas.” Mardonius walked with him upon the shelving shore. A skiff, small but stanch, was ready with oars.
The Councillors had departed, Sir Charles was thinking of breakfast, the Maxim-like lawn-mower still irritated the silent hush of midday, when from the waters of the inner harbor there came suddenly the sharp report of a saluting gun and the rush of falling anchor-chains. There was still a week to pass before the mail-steamer should arrive, and H. M. S. Partridge had departed for Nassau.
A steamer whistles in the harbour, another steamer answers with a hoarse blast; flags flutter, barges swim back and forth; sails rattle aloft and sails are furled. Here and there an anchor splashes; the anchor-chains tear out of the hawse-holes in a cloud of rust. The sounds mingle in a ponderous harmony which rolls in over the city like a jubilant chorus.
For five, for ten, for twenty minutes, for an hour, for two hours, the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination shows all things in ghostly half-concealment, fresh floods of lightning every moment rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare of day falls upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to lighten the strain upon her anchor-chains; then all are dim ghosts again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that before it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal.
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