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Updated: June 29, 2025
The cargo had been already stowed in the hold by the stevedores and lumpers from shore; but it became the crew's business to clear away the between-decks, extending from the cabin bulkhead to the forecastle, for the reception of about five hundred emigrants, some of whose boxes were already littering the decks.
At noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping, retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining one for a table.
As he walked in the direction of his mother's house, in company with Joe, he scanned with a curious eye the houses, the shops, and the people that he passed. Nothing appeared changed; the same signs indicated an unchanging hospitality on the part of the same landlords, the same lumpers were standing at the same corners it seemed as if he had been gone only a day.
Among the workers in botany and in every department of zoölogy there have always been the "splitters" and the "lumpers," as they are familiarly called; the former insisting on the most minute distinctions between their "species," thus multiplying them; the latter being more liberal and tending to diminish the number of species in any given group.
In the immediate foreground beneath them was the port of St. Nicolas, with the low shanties serving as offices for the inspectors of navigation, and the large paved river-bank sloping down, littered with piles of sand, barrels, and sacks, and edged with a row of lighters, still full, in which busy lumpers swarmed beneath the gigantic arm of an iron crane.
Captain Sol had been on the Industry for a long time, seeing that the cargo was stowed as well as it could be stowed, and trying to hurry the lumpers. But he couldn't make them hurry very much. Captain Sol wanted to get the Industry away before the Augusta Ramsay sailed, so as to gain as much time as he could.
A dozen lumpers getting 'em out from both holds and two at a lick they're coming onto Duncan's Dock. And what d'y'think, Tommie " "But what kept you so long, man? We've all been getting heart disease waiting for you." "I know. We ought to've been in yesterday mornin', or in the afternoon at the latest, for we swung her off Tuesday night midnight plenty of time with a fair wind.
The Thames abounds with river thieves, with lumpers, scuffle-hunters, mud-larks, glutmen, rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to bribe them with the value of half the lading and to risk their stealing the other half.
Hearing the double fire, down went the Rangers into the skippers' cabins; groped for the skippers' inexpressibles, which it was the custom of those gentlemen to shake off, watch, money, braces, boots, and all together, on the floor; and therewith made off as silently as might be. Then there were the Lumpers, or labourers employed to unload vessels.
Soon after dusk Meg returned; she had in the folds of her gown a loaf of bread and a very small piece of bacon, and it was evident to Thady that whatever had become of Joe and the other, they had not forgotten him or their promise to provide him with some better food than the lumpers which sufficed for Andy McEvoy and his daughter.
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