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A small number were waiting on the solid rock-filled reach, the wharfinger's office at its head and a stone warehouse blocking the end, where the Nautilus lay with her high-steeved bowsprit pointing outward. The harbor was slaty, cold, and there was a continuous slapping of small waves on the shore. Darkening clouds hung low in the west, out of which the wind cut in flaws across the open.
At length, however, he was found at a wharfinger's office, where there had arisen some question of a missing case of condensed milk. Within half an hour he was at Scotland Yard. A tall man with tired grey eyes, about the corners of which were tiny wrinkles, with a weather-beaten face and grey moustache, he aimed to look something like a riverside tradesman.
The wharfinger's reply to my impatient questions was an unvarying apathetic "We don't know," and, spurred to action by this, I set out to find the posting-house. I pushed open the big gate of the courtyard alongside, and entered. Half the court was roofed over with thatch. In the far corner, divorced wagon bodies, running-gear, and harnesses lay heaped on the earth.
Once, when two little girls evidently the wharfinger's daughters went by, my hand reached out to the door to open it so that I might call to them and present them with the puling little wretch. A farewell surprise package from Galbraith, he had arrived at the hotel the night before, by express from New York. It was Galbraith's way.
We watched the wharfinger's boys trying to drown themselves in a cranky boat, like the young male animals of all lands; we listened to their shrill little songs; we counted the ducks, gazed at the peasants assembled on the brow of the steep hill above us, on which the town was situated, and speculated about the immediate future, until the time fixed and three quarters of an hour more had elapsed.
He was at this time a counting-house clerk in a large wharfinger's establishment, and had married on a salary of eighty pounds a year. "I tell you what it is, Robinson," said he, about this time: "I don't understand this business of yours." "No," said Robinson; "perhaps not. A business like ours is not easily understood." "You don't seem to me to divide any profits."
The wharfinger's office is a general resort and refuge for people who have business to do on the wharf, in the spaces before work is commenced, between the hours of one and two, etc. A salamander stove a table of the signals, wharves, and agent of packets plying to and from Boston a snuff-box a few chairs etc., constituting the furniture. A newspaper. February 11.
As this, in other phraseology, implies that "God only knows how she died," it was agreed to nemine contradicente, and gave universal satisfaction. But the extraordinary circumstance was spread everywhere, with all due amplifications, and thousands flocked to the wharfinger's yard to witness the effects of spontaneous combustion.
The syndicate could not wait until she had tied up at her dock, and the minute the steamer had passed quarantine Mr. Gibney hailed a passing launch. Bag and baggage the happy quartette descended to the launch and landed at Meiggs wharf. Mr. Gibney stepped into the wharfinger's office and requested permission to use the telephone. "What's up, Gib?" demanded Captain Scraggs.
Now who else have we in our employ that I can send? I want a man and a rattling smart one." "Mike Murphy, the skipper of the Narcissus," Matt suggested. "The very man! He's discharging at Union Street Wharf. Phone the wharfinger's office and tell him he'll not regret taking a message down to the dock to Captain Murphy. Murphy will probably be at lunch aboard.
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