The crowd murmured, stamped where they
stood.--"Let go your quarter-checks! Let go!" sang out a ruddy-faced old
man on the quay. The ropes splashed heavily falling in the water, and
the _Narcissus_ entered the dock.
The stony shores ran away right and left in straight lines, enclosing
a sombre and rectangular pool. Brick walls rose high above the
water!--soulless walls, staring through hundreds of windows as troubled
and dull as the eyes of over-fed brutes. At their base monstrous iron
cranes crouched, with chains hanging from their long necks, balancing
cruel-looking hooks over the decks of lifeless ships. A noise of wheels
rolling over stones, the thump of heavy things falling, the racket of
feverish winches, the grinding of strained chains, floated on the air.
Between high buildings the dust of all the continents soared in short
flights; and a penetrating smell of perfumes and dirt, of spices and
hides, of things costly and of things filthy, pervaded the space, made
for it an atmosphere precious and disgusting. The _Narcissus_ came
gently into her berth; the shadows of soulless walls fell upon her, the
dust of all the continents leaped upon her deck, and a swarm of strange
men, clambering up her sides, took possession of her in the name of the
sordid earth.
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