n mysterious that
two of the apprentices fell off the stage on which they were working
alongside; they were soon dressed in borrowed plumage. Suddenly in the
evening our discharge began.

Lighters of the local type, very long and narrow, were already alongside
when the tugs swung the first elevator into his place. The huge floating
turret looked somewhat like a smock mill. The stevedores quickly made
fast their tackle: four large drain-pipe tubes were let down into the
chosen hold, and the suckers commenced. There was a drumming boom of
machinery, mixed with the swish of the ingulfing of the grain and its
disgorging through broader conduits on the other side of the elevator
into the river barges. It grew dark, the red and green railway lights
burned fiercely in brisk air against the last of an orange sunset. But
the elevator was kept at work, and arc lights hung over the hold showed
the novel scene of the sliding grain and its trimmers.

One effect of the late-continued drone and thud of the elevator was to
torment me with war dreams. First I was in an attack, among great rocks,
under a violent barrage; then, on one of those unforgettable raw, dark
mornings, I was at the window of a great ruined house behind the line,
watching the bleary effulgence of the Very lights starting up here and
there and expecting the worst from a nasty silence, only pierced by single
shell-bursts. Then, beside the elevator, an infuriated and intoxicated
bargee stood on the landing-stage about midnight bawling for a boat which
didn't come. His patience was, however, considerable; he bawled for a
long hour. In consequence, I suppose, of these matters I arrived very
late at breakfast amid the usual cries of "You Jonah, you!"

The second elevator arrived, and, like some great iron insect with many
beaks, began to swallow up the grain from the holds aft. The ship shook
with the speed and power of the pumping machinery; the long lighters with
their great round-table steering wheels filled up, battened down, and
swung away. In one of the holds there were the bags put in at Ingeniero
White; under them again lay the yellow grain in mass. The elevator's
proboscis dipped into that grain, while the trimmers unstowed, slit and
emptied the sacks; so the ship began to lighten, and her bow already
stood high out of the water.

The red evening sky was smoky with cold; then the stars sparkled with
frost; and a small gathering enjoyed the oil stove in Bicker