Island.

Other wharves are occupied by mast-yards, places that seem like
play-rooms for grown men, crammed fuller than any old garret with
those odds and ends in which the youthful soul delights. There
are planks and spars and timber, broken rudders, rusty anchors,
coils of rope, bales of sail-cloth, heaps of blocks, piles of
chain-cable, great iron tar-kettles like antique helmets, strange
machines for steaming planks, inexplicable little chimneys,
engines that seem like dwarf-locomotives, windlasses that
apparently turn nothing, and incipient canals that lead nowhere.
For in these yards there seems no particular difference between
land and water; the tide comes and goes anywhere, and nobody
minds it; boats are drawn up among burdocks and ambrosia, and the
platform on which you stand suddenly proves to be something
afloat. Vessels are hauled upon the ways, each side of the wharf,
their poor ribs pitiably unclothed, ready for a cumbrous
mantua-making of oak and iron. On one side, within a floating
boom, lies a fleet of masts and unhewn logs, tethered uneasily,
like a herd of captive sea-monsters, rocking in the ripples. A
vast shed, that has doubtless looked ready to fall for these
dozen years spreads over, half the entrance to the wharf, and is
filled with spars, knee-timber, and planks of fragrant wood; its
uprights are festooned with all manner of great hawsers and
smaller ropes, and its dim loft is piled with empty casks and
idle sails. The sun always seems to shine in a ship-yard; there
are apt to be more loungers than laborers, and this gives a
pleasant air of repose; the neighboring water softens all harsher
sounds, the foot treads upon an elastic carpet of embedded chips,
and pleasant resinous odors are in the air.