that was to come off that night and his engaged dance with Jo
Herrick. He decided that it would be best to meet Jerry as he
came off the boat and tell him how matters stood. Then he
resolved, since no one that he knew was in the club, and the
instalment of the Paris weeklies had not arrived, that it would be
amusing to go down to the water-front and loaf among the shipping
until it was time for Jerry's boat.

Wilbur spent an hour along the wharves, watching the great grain
ships consigned to "Cork for orders" slowly gorging themselves
with whole harvests of wheat from the San Joaquin Valley; lumber
vessels for Durban and South African ports settling lower and
lower to the water's level as forests of pine and redwood
stratified themselves along their decks and in their holds; coal
barges discharging from Nanaimo; busy little tugs coughing and
nuzzling at the flanks of the deep-sea tramps, while hay barges
and Italian whitehalls came and went at every turn. A Stockton
River boat went by, her stern wheel churning along behind, like a
huge net-reel; a tiny maelstrom of activity centred about an
Alaska Commercial Company's steamboat that would clear for Dawson
in the morning.

No quarter of one of the most picturesque cities in the world had
more interest for Wilbur than the water-front. In the mile or so
of shipping that stretched from the docks where the China
steamships landed, down past the ferry slips and on to Meiggs's
Wharf, every maritime nation in the world was represented. More
than once Wilbur had talked to the loungers of the wharves,
stevedores out of work, sailors between voyages, caulkers and ship
chandlers' men looking--not too earnestly--for jobs; so that on