Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/179



HE ferry-house clock, at the foot of Christopher Street, marked fifteen minutes past five; and all the trucks of the wholesale district were hurrying in, over the paving-stones of the side streets, to the wide esplanade of asphalt that lies along this stretch of the New York water-front.

They kept coming, like the rout of a commissariat, with noise and confusion, clattering over the uneven pavements and humping across the car tracks. Already hundreds of them, their empty shafts thrown upbefore them like stiff arms, supplicated the sunset in long rows; and down the passageways between them, the drivers, on the hacks of their horses, raced to the boarding stables like farm-boys free for the night.

Carney was late. He had hoped to have his team in their stalls by five o'clock, but his last delivery of packing-cases had not been taken off his hands until ten minutes past five. Now he came down Christopher Street like a Roman chariot-racer, standing behind the high seat of his double truck, shaken to the ears with the jarring of the axles, his huge Clydesdales pounding along as if to break their hoofs.