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From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life, from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity, we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls, and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.
By four P.M. I once more set my foot on the dock-side of New York, after an absence of five months, and felt as though I had again reached home.
The dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the dock-gates.
An even greater miracle was performed in a dock-side school, where to most of the children a back-yard was a luxury beyond all possibility. The school playground was very small, and evening classes made a school garden quite impossible. But the head mistress was one who saw life full of possibilities, and so she saw a garden even in the sordidness.
"You did splendidly," said Aunt Stanshy, aloud. "But I had to work for it! And now I want a light, which you may wonder I didn't get before; but I was so anxious to help that fellow, I put and run as soon as I heard him cry, and when I was in the dock I thought I might as well stick to him and work him into a safe place. But haven't you a door in the dock-side of your barn?"
As they advanced along the dock-side, Jeremy distinguished among the low-roofed houses a small inn before which a great sign swung in the wind. By the light which flickered through the windows they could make out three dark monsters painted upon the board, a white tree apparently growing from the head of each. "The Three Whales," laughed Jeremy, "and every one a-blowing! Let's go in!"
It was not until the spring of 1910 that we could afford to engage any officers or men for the ship, so that most of the work of rigging her was done by dock-side workers under a good old master rigger named Malley. Landsmen would have stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Malley's men with their diminutive dolly-winch had they watched our new masts and yards being got into place.
This letter was written before my birth and about six years before the writer of it appeared, as an angel of help, in the dingy dock-side inn, where we tired travelers had taken shelter on our arrival from the other side of the world, and where I was first kissed by my godmother. I felt toward her a passionate and troubled affection.
I see trawlers fishing and mine-sweeping whenever I raise my eyes from my writing. Their crews know that they work in the shadow of death in what they describe in the dock-side taverns as the greatest sport in the world. Praise of the big ships often causes us to forget the little ships. I admire the one and reverence the other.
He told me there was no hurry, that I should miss the tide at Dornumersiel, and then fell to pressing strong waters on me, and asking questions whose insinuating grossness gave me the key to his biography: He must have been at one stage in his career a dock-side crimp, one of those foul sharks who prey on discharged seamen, and as often as not are ex-seamen themselves, versed in the weaknesses of the tribe.
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