United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieks of the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped the hoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as could well be imagined, and yet one which was in reality merely an orderly loading of a ship of whose existence, much less her destination, few were aware.
An American Negro stevedore assigned to the great docks in southwestern France had written several letters to his black Susanna in Jacksonville, Fla., when she wrote back saying: "You-all don't nevah tell me nothin' 'bout de battle a-tall. Tilda Sublet's Dave done wrote her all about how he kotched two Germans all by hisself and kilt three mo'."
A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other long-shore vanities were left behind.
The poor negro is usually packed as closely as any other species of merchandise, and a large cargo of them can be stowed in a small space for it is rare that the slightest consideration of humanity enters the thoughts of their inhuman stevedore.
"Then that's all," says I. "Only you got to lay off with them merry expressions when you lug those sacks aboard. Handle 'em careful and reverent, and stow 'em in the main cabin where you're told. If you do it well I expect there'll be more or less in it for all of you. Now, then, got your cues, have you?" They salutes respectful. "Then get busy with the stevedore stuff," says I.
Being awakened by the moonlight, a ray of which fell into my eyes, I suddenly saw Jahel in her night-cap coming through the trap door. At a cry that I gave she put her finger to her lips. "Hush!" she said to me, "Maurice is as drunk as a stevedore and a marquis. He sleeps the sleep of Noah." "Who is Maurice?" I inquired, rubbing my eyes. "It's Anquetil. Who did you think it was?"
I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing on a girl of romantic mind. "Well, well, well, Jeeves." "Yes, sir." "This is splendid news." "Yes, sir." "You see now how right I was." "Yes, sir."
The orchestra men, too, learned to like him. They discovered that, with all his public histrionics, he was on the level as a musician. He is a merciless task master, but in rehearsals he gives himself no airs. Dressed in an old pair of pants and a disreputable brown woolen sweater, which he has worn in private since the day he landed in Boston, he works like a stevedore.
Some invisible force lifted Eliphalet's eyes to the upper deck, where they rested, as if by appointment, on the trim figure of the young man in command of the Louisiana. He was very young for the captain of a large New Orleans packet. When his lips moved, something happened. Once he raised his voice, and a negro stevedore rushed frantically aft, as if he had received the end of a lightning-bolt.
If you don't know your business, sir, I know mine. Somebody's got to tend that sling, and everybody's business is nobody's business. If I'm not on the job a bundle of shingles may come flying down from above and kill a man, or that heavy cargo block may crack a stevedore on the head. Who's going to look after the broken bundles and see that they're repacked if I don't?
Word Of The Day