winch-pauls

Updated: May 5, 2025

Gay as Naples with colour, piercing the blue sky with a thousand spars, fluttering the flags of all nations to the wind, shot through with the sharp rattle of winch-chains, and perfumed with garlic, vanilla, fumes of coal tar, and the tang of the sea, the wharves of Marseilles lay before the travellers, a great counter eternally vibrating to the thunder of trade; bales of carpets from the Levant, tons of cheeses from Holland, wood from Norway, copra, rice, tobacco, corn, silks from China and Japan, cotton from Lancashire; all pouring in to the tune of the winch-pauls, the cry of the stevedores, and the bugles of Port Saint Jean, shrill beneath the blue sky and triumphant as the crowing of the Gallic cock.

H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole - The Pools of Silence