more than a shadow, but I seem to hear his words spoken on the
moonlit deck of the old Duke--:

"Ports are no good--ships rot, men go to the devil!"



XXXV.



"Ships!" exclaimed an elderly seaman in clean shore togs. "Ships"-
-and his keen glance, turning away from my face, ran along the
vista of magnificent figure-heads that in the late seventies used
to overhang in a serried rank the muddy pavement by the side of the
New South Dock--"ships are all right; it's the men in 'em. . ."

Fifty hulls, at least, moulded on lines of beauty and speed--hulls
of wood, of iron, expressing in their forms the highest achievement
of modern ship-building--lay moored all in a row, stem to quay, as
if assembled there for an exhibition, not of a great industry, but
of a great art. Their colours were gray, black, dark green, with a
narrow strip of yellow moulding defining their sheer, or with a row
of painted ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks
of cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in
carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no
victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the sea. The
great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with
their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous
dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable