here upon the City's edge, swelling in size with the lapse of
every minute, vast, conglomerate, restless, and throwing off into the
stillness of the quiet gray air a prolonged, indefinite murmur, a
monotonous minor note.

The surface of the bay was dotted over with all manner of craft black
with people. Rowboats, perilously overcrowded, were everywhere.
Ferryboats and excursion steamers, chartered for that day, heeled over
almost to the water's edge with the unsteady weight of their passengers.
Tugboats passed up and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags
of various journals and news organisations--the News, the Press, the
Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful
and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple
to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic,
solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her
turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless to her anchor.

An hour passed; noon came. At long intervals a faint seaward breeze
compressed the fog, and high, sad-coloured clouds and a fine and
penetrating rain came drizzling down. The crowds along the wharves grew
denser and blacker. The numbers of yachts, boats, and steamers
increased; even the yards and masts of the merchant-ships were dotted
over with watchers.

Then, at length, from far up the bay there came a faint, a barely
perceptible, droning sound, the sound of distant shouting. Instantly the
crowds were alert, and a quick, surging movement rippled from end to end
of the throng along the water-front. Its subdued murmur rose in pitch
upon the second. Like a flock of agitated gulls, the boats in the
harbour stirred nimbly from place to place; a belated newspaper tug tore
by, headed for the upper bay, smoking fiercely, the water boiling from
her bows. From the battleship came the tap of a drum. The excursion
steamers and chartered ferryboats moved to points of vantage and took
position, occasionally feeling the water with their paddles.

The distant, droning sound drew gradually nearer, swelling in volume,
and by degrees splitting into innumerable component parts. One began to
distinguish the various notes that contributed to its volume--a sharp,
quick volley of inarticulate shouts or a cadenced cheer or a hoarse
salvo of steam whistles. Bells began to ring in different quarters of
the City.

Then all at once the advancing wave of sound swept