Condy Rivers, I've long since got over the idea of ever expecting you to have any change concealed about your person.""Huh! no, it all goes for theatre tickets, and flowers, and boxes of candy for a certain girl I know. But"--and he glared at her significantly--"no more foolishness."She laughed. "What are you 'on' this morning, Condy?"Condy told her as they started to walk toward Kearney Street.
But why DON'T you go to the dock and see the vessel, if you can make a better article that way?""Oh, what's the good! The Centennial people have turned down my stories."She commiserated him for this; then suddenly exclaimed:
"No, you must go down to the dock! You ought to, Condy Oh, I tell you, let me go down with you!"In an instant Condy leaped to the notion. "Splendid! splendid! no reason why you shouldn't!" he exclaimed. And within fifteen minutes the two were treading the wharves and quays of the city's water-front.
Ships innumerable nuzzled at the endless line of docks, mast overspiring mast, and bowsprit overlapping bowsprit, till the eye was bewildered, as if by the confusion of branches in a leafless forest. In the distance the mass of rigging resolved itself into a solid gray blur against the sky. The great hulks, green and black and slate gray, laid themselves along the docks, straining leisurely at their mammoth chains, their flanks opened, their cargoes, as it were their entrails, spewed out in a wild disarray of crate and bale and box. Sailors and stevedores swarmed them like vermin. Trucks rolled along the wharves like peals of ordnance, the horse-hoofs beating the boards like heavy drum-taps.
Chains clanked, a ship's dog barked incessantly from a companionway, ropes creaked in complaining pulleys, blocks rattled, hoisting-engines coughed and strangled, while all the air was redolent of oakum, of pitch, of paint, of spices, of ripe fruit, of clean cool lumber, of coffee, of tar, of bilge, and the brisk, nimble odor of the sea.
Travis was delighted, her little brown eyes snapping, her cheeks flushing, as she drank in the scene.
"To think," she cried, "where all these ships have come from! Look at their names; aren't they perfect? Just the names, see: the 'Mary Baker,' Hull; and the 'Anandale,' Liverpool; and the 'Two Sisters,' Calcutta, and see that one they're calking, the 'Montevideo,' Callao; and there, look! look! the very one you're looking for, the 'City of Everett,' San Francisco."The whaleback, an immense tube of steel plates, lay at her wharf, sucking in entire harvests of wheat from the San Joaquin valley--harvests that were to feed strangely clad skeletons on the southern slopes of the Himalaya foot-hills. Travis and Condy edged their way among piles of wheat-bags, dodging drays and rumbling trucks, and finally brought up at the after gangplank, where a sailor halted them. Condy exhibited his reporter's badge.
"I represent 'The Times,'" he said, with profound solemnity, "and I want to see the officer in charge."The sailor fell back upon the instant.
"Power of the press," whispered Condy to Travis as the two gained the deck.
A second sailor directed them to the mate, whom they found in the chart-room, engaged, singularly enough, in trimming the leaves of a scraggly geranium.
Condy explained his mission with flattering allusions to the whaleback and the novelty of the construction. The mate--an old man with a patriarchal beard--softened at once, asked them into his own cabin aft, and even brought out a camp-stool for Travis, brushing it with his sleeve before setting it down.
While Condy was interviewing the old fellow, Travis was examining, with the interest of a child, the details of the cabin: the rack-like bunk, the washstand, ingeniously constructed so as to shut into the bulkhead when not in use, the alarm-clock screwed to the wall, and the array of photographs thrust into the mirror between frame and glass. One, an old daguerreotype, particularly caught her fancy. It was the portrait of a very beautiful girl, wearing the old-fashioned side curls and high comb of a half-century previous. The old mate noticed the attention she paid to it, and, as soon as he had done giving information to Condy, turned and nodded to Travis, and said quietly: "She was pretty, wasn't she?""Oh, very! answered Travis, without looking away.
There was a silence. Then the mate, his eyes wide and thoughtful, said with a long breath:
