and sat down on a wooden beam
which Abner called a bulkhead.

"If we don't begin calling things names," he remarked, "we'll never get
to feeling we're here. Let's just sit and feel for a while."

"I've begun," I replied.

We sat in the shade of two wooden piles with the glare of a midsummer
sun all around us. The East River had been like a crowded creek compared
to this wide expanse of water slapping and gleaming out there in the sun
with smoke shadows chasing over it all. There was the rough odor of
smoke in the air from craft of all kinds as they skurried about. The
high black bow of a Cunarder loomed at the end of the dock next ours.
Far across the river the stout German liners lay at their berths--and
they did not look like sea hogs. What a change had come over the harbor
since I had met that motorboat. How all the hogs had waddled away, and
the very smoke and the oil on the waves had taken on deep, vivid
hues--as I had seen through Eleanore's eyes. "What a strange wonderful
purple," her low voice seemed to murmur at my side.

"She's going away from here," said Ab. I started:

"Who is?"

"That Cunarder. Look at the smoke pour out of her stacks. Got a
cigarette about you?"

"No," I answered gruffly.

"Damn."

In the slip on our other side a large freight boat was loading, and a
herd of scows and barges were pressing close around her. These clumsy
craft had cabins, and in some whole families lived. "Harbor Gypsies." A
good title. I had paid the butcher, but the grocer was still waiting. So
I dismissed my motorboat and grimly turned to scows instead. Children by
the dozen were making friends from barge to barge. Dogs were all about
us and they too were busy visiting. High up on the roof of a coal
lighter's cabin an impudent little skye-terrier kept barking at the
sooty men who were shoveling down below. One of these from time to time
would lift his black face and good-humoredly call, "Oh, you go to
hell"--which would drive the small dog into frenzies. Most of the barges
had derrick masts, and all these masts were moving. They rose between me
and the sky, bobbing, tossing and criss-crossing, filling the place with
the feeling of life, the unending, restless life of the sea.

An ear-shattering roar broke in on it all. Our Cunarder was starting.
Smoke belching black from her funnels, the monster was beginning to
move.

But what was this woman doing close by us? Out of the cabin of a barge
she had dragged a