"All right, all right! can't do everything at once."

He remained near by, muttering to himself till the yards had been
hauled round at my order, and then raised again his foggy, thick
voice:

"None too soon," he observed, with a critical glance up at the
towering side of the warehouse. "That's a half-sovereign in your
pocket, Mr. Mate. You should always look first how you are for
them windows before you begin to breast in your ship to the quay."

It was good advice. But one cannot think of everything or foresee
contacts of things apparently as remote as stars and hop-poles.



XXXII.



The view of ships lying moored in some of the older docks of London
has always suggested to my mind the image of a flock of swans kept
in the flooded backyard of grim tenement houses. The flatness of
the walls surrounding the dark pool on which they float brings out
wonderfully the flowing grace of the lines on which a ship's hull
is built. The lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds
and the seas, makes, by contrast with the great piles of bricks,
the chains and cables of their moorings appear very necessary, as
if nothing less could prevent them from soaring upwards and over