ese things are possible, and
men aver that a cyclone may come again and scatter the craft like chaff.
Outside the Port Office are the export and import sheds, buildings that
can hold a ship's cargo apiece, all standing on reclaimed ground. Here
be several strong smells, a mass of railway lines, and a multitude of
men. "Do you see where that trolly is standing, behind the big P. and O.
berth? In that place as nearly as may be the _Govindpur_ went down about
twenty years ago, and began to shift out!" "But that is solid ground."
"She sank there, and the next tide made a scour-hole on one side of her.
The returning tide knocked her into it. Then the mud made up behind her.
Next tide the business was repeated--always the scour-hole in the mud
and the filling up behind her. So she rolled, and was pushed out and out
until she got in the way of the shipping right out yonder, and we had to
blow her up. When a ship sinks in mud or quicksand she regularly digs
her own grave and wriggles herself into it deeper and deeper till she
reaches moderately solid stuff. Then she sticks." Horrible idea, is it
not, to go down and down with each tide into the foul Hugli mud?

Close to the Port Offices is the Shipping Office, where the captains
engage their crews. The men must produce their discharges from their
last ships in the presence of the shipping master, or, as they call him,
"The Deputy Shipping." He passes them after having satisfied himself
that they are not deserters from other ships, and they then sign
articles for the voyage. This is the ceremony, beginning with the
"dearly beloved" of the crew-hunting captain down to the "amazement" of
the deserter. There is a dingy building, next door to the Sailors' Home,
at whose gate stand the cast-ups of all the seas in all manner of
raiment. There are the Seedee boys, Bombay _serangs_ and Madras
fishermen of the salt villages, Malays who insist upon marrying Calcutta
women, grow jealous and run _amok_; Malay-Hindus, Hindu-Malay-Whites,
Burmese, Burma-Whites, Burma-Native-Whites, Italians with gold earrings
and a thirst for gambling, Yankees of all the States, with Mulattoes and
pure buck-niggers, red and rough Danes, Cingalese, Cornish boys fresh
taken from the plough-tail, "corn-stalks" from colonial ships where they
got four pound ten a month as seamen, tun-bellied Germans, Cockney mates
keeping a little aloof from the crowd and talking in knots together,
unmistakable "Tommies" who have tu