f 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
sle