Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/223

Rh with some show of education. When we had been sitting side by side for some minutes he turned to me and said:

"'It is a beautiful picture we have before us, is it not?'

"'It is, indeed,' I answered. ’And what a diversity of shipping!'

"'You may well say that,' he continued. 'It would be an interesting study, would it not, to make a list of all the craft that pass in and out of this harbour in a day—to put down the places where they were built and whence they hail, the characters of their owners and commanders, and their errands about the world. What a book it would make, would it not? Look at that man-o'-war in Farm Cove; think of the money she cost, think of where that money came from—the rich people who paid without thinking, the poor who dreaded the coming of the tax collector like a visit from the Evil One; imagine the busy dockyard in which she was built—can't you seem to hear the clang of the riveters and the buzzing of the steam saws? Then take that Norwegian boat passing the fort there; think of her birthplace in far Norway, think of the places she has since seen, imagine her masts growing in the forests on the mountain side of lonely fiords, where the silence is so intense that a stone rolling down and dropping into the water echoes like thunder. Then again, look at that emigrant vessel steaming slowly up the harbour; think of the folk aboard her, all with their hopes and fears, confident of a successful future in this terra incognita, or despondent of that and everything else. Away to the left there you see a little island schooner making her way down towards the blue Pacific; imagine her in a few weeks among the islands—tropical heavens