Down the long quay splashed cabs and omnibuses, their drivers glistening
in wet capes, to discharge under the open shed at the end various hasty
individuals who marshalled long lines of porters with astonishing
impedimenta and drove them up the gang-plank. A half-dozen roughs
lounged aimlessly. A little bent old woman with a shawl over her head
searched here and there. Occasionally she would find a twisted splinter
of wood torn from the piles by a hawser or gouged from the planking by
heavy freight, or kicked from the floor by the hoofs of horses. This she
deposited carefully in a small covered market basket. She was entirely
intent on this minute and rather pathetic task, quite unattending the
greatness of the ship, or the many people the great hulk swallowed or
spat forth.
Near us against the rail leaned a dark-haired young Englishman whom
later every man on that many-nationed ship came to recognize and to
avoid as an insufferable bore. Now, however, the angel of good
inspiration stooped to him. He tossed a copper two-sou piece down to the
bent old woman. She heard the clink of the fall, and looked up
bewildered. One of the waterside roughs slouched forward. The Englishman
shouted a warning and a threat, indicating in pantomime for whom the
coin was intended. To our surprise that evil-looking wharf rat smiled
and waved his hand reassuringly, then took the old woman by the arm to
show her where the coin had fallen.
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