Hundreds of mules and drays came and went with this same wealth, and out
beyond all, between wharf and open river, profiled on the eastern sky,
letting themselves be unloaded and reloaded, stood the compacted,
motionless, elephantine phalanx of the boats.
The flood beneath them was up to the wharf's flooring, yet their low,
light-draught hulls, with the freight decks that covered them doubled in
carrying room by their widely overhanging freight guards, were hid by
the wilderness of goods on shore. Hid also were their furnaces, boilers,
and engines on the same deck, sharing it with the cargo. But all their
gay upper works, so toplofty and frail, showed a gleaming white front to
the western sun. You marked each one's jack-staff, that rose mast high
from the unseen prow, and behind it the boiler deck, high over the
boilers. Over the boiler deck was the hurricane roof, above that the
officers' rooms, called the "texas." Above the texas was the
pilot-house, and on either side, well forward of the pilot-house and
towering abreast of each other and above all else--higher than the two
soaring derrick posts at the two forward corners of the passenger and
hurricane decks, higher even than the jack-staff's peak--stood the two
great black chimneys.
And what a populace teemed round and through all! Here was the Creole,
there the New Englander.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25