ese
Coolies doing? Handling silks and spices? Oh, no. They were hoisting and
letting down into the hold an automobile from Dayton, Ohio, bound for
New South Wales. Gone were the figs and almonds, the indigo, ivory,
tortoise shells. Into the brand-new ledgers over which my father worked,
he was entering such items as barbed wire, boilers, car wheels and gas
engines, baby carriages, kegs of paint. I reveled in the commonplace
stuff, contrasting it vividly in my mind with the starlit ocean roads it
would travel, the picturesque places it would help spoil.

I filled in the scene with all its details, the more accurate, glaring
and real the better--the brand-new towering skyline risen of late on
Manhattan, the new steel bridge, an ugly one this, and all the modern
steam craft, tugs, river boats, Sound steamers, each one of them panting
and spewing up smoke. I sat there like a stenographer and took down the
harbor's dictation, noting the rasping tones of its voice, recording
eagerly all its smells. And all this and more that I gathered, I
focussed on the sea hog.

And then toward the end of a winter's day we looked out of our window
and saw her "sail." She sailed in a nervous, worrying haste to the
grunts and shrieks of a lot of steam winches. Up rattled her anchor, out
she waddled, tugs puffing their smoke and steam in her face. She didn't
depart. Who ever heard of a hog departing? She just went. There were no
songs, no last good-byes--except from a man in his shirt sleeves who
called from the deck to a man on the pier, "So long, Mac, see you next
Spring," and then went into the factory.

When the work of the day was over, I went down into the dock shed. My
father's old place was at peace for a time, the desecration done with.
She was empty, dark and silent. In her long, inward-sloping walls the
eight wide sliding doors were closed. Only through the dusty skylights
here and there fell great masses of soft light. Big bunches of canvas
hung from above, ropes dangled out of the shadows. And there were huge
rhythmic creakings that made you feel the ocean still here, an old ocean
under an old, old dock. The place grew creepy with its past.

"Faint, spicy odors," I jotted down, as I stood there in the dimness,
"ghosts of long ago--low echoes of old chanties sung by Yankee
sailors--romance--mystery----"

I broke off writing and drew back behind a crate. My father had entered
the dock shed and was coming slowly up the dock. Pre