NIGHTCAP THAT HAD NO BUSINESS TO BE WHERE IT WAS.

No one acquainted with the character of that extraordinary town will
be surprised when I say that, within an hour after the occurrences
related in the last chapter, Troy had resumed its workday quiet.
By two o'clock nothing was to be heard but the tick-tack of mallets
in the ship-building yards, the puffing of the steam-tug, the rattle
of hawsers among the vessels out in the harbour, and the melodious
"Woo-hoo!" of a crew at capstan or windlass. Troy in carnival and
Troy sober are as opposite, you must know, as the poles. Fun is all
very well, but business is business, and Troy is a trading port with
a character to keep up: for who has not heard the bye-word--
"Working like a Trojan"?

At two o'clock on this same day a little schooner lay alongside the
town quay, busily discharging bricks. That is to say, a sunburnt
man, blue-jerseyed and red with brick-dust, leisurely turned a
windlass which let down an empty bucket and brought it up full.
Another blue-jerseyed man, also sunburnt and red with brick-dust,
then pulled it on shore, emptied and returned it; and the operation
was repeated. A choleric little man, of about fifty, presumably the
proprietor of the bricks, stood on the edge of the quay, and swore
alternately at the man with the windlass and the man ashore.

"Look 'ere," said the man at the windlass, after a bit.
"Stop cussin'. This ain't a hurdy-gurdy, and if you expec's music
you'll have to toss us a copper."

The owner of the bricks swore worse than ever.