Bob retraced his steps to the street on which he had started out.  There he discovered a steep stairway, and by it mounted to the tramway above.  Along this he wandered for what seemed to him an interminable distance, lost as in a maze among the streets and byways of this tenantless city.  Once he stepped aside to give passage to the great horse, or one like him, and his train of little cars.  The man driving nodded to him.  Again he happened on two men unloading similar cars, and passing the boards down to other men below, who piled them skilfully, two end planks one way, and then the next tier the other, in regular alternation.  They wore thick leather aprons, and square leather pieces strapped across the insides of their hands as a protection against splinters.  These, like all other especial accoutrements, seemed to Bob somehow romantic, to be desired, infinitely picturesque.  He passed on with the clear, yellow-white of the pine boards lingering back of his retina.

But now suddenly his sauntering brought him to the water front.  The tramway ended in a long platform running parallel to the edge of the docks below.  There were many little cars, both in the process of unloading and awaiting their turn.  The place swarmed with men, all busily engaged in handing the boards from one to another as buckets are passed at a fire.  At each point where an unending stream of them passed over the side of each ship, stood a young man with a long, flexible rule.  This he laid rapidly along the width of each board, and then as rapidly entered a mark in a note-book.  The boards seemed to move fairly of their own volition, like a scutellate monster of many joints, crawling from the cars, across the dock, over the side of the ship and into the black hold where presumably it coiled.  There were six ships; six, many-jointed monsters creeping to their appointed places under the urging of these their masters; six young men absorbed and busy at the tallying; six crews panoplied in leather guiding the monsters to their lairs.  Here, too, the sun-warmed air arose sluggish with the aroma of pitch, of lumber, of tar from the ships’ cordage, of the wetness of unpainted wood.  Aloft in the rigging, clear against the sky, were sailors in contrast of peaceful, leisurely industry to those who toiled and hurried below.  The masts swayed gently, describing an arc against the heavens.  The sailors swung easily to the motion.  From below came the quick dull sounds of planks thrown down, the grind of car wheels, the movement of feet, the varied, complex sound of men working together, the clapping of waters against the structure.  It was confusing, confusing as the noise of many hammers.  Yet two things seemed to steady it, to confine it, keep it in the bounds of order, to prevent it from usurping more than its meet and proper proportion.  One was the tingling lake breeze singing through the rigging of the ship; the other was the idle and intermittent whistling of one of the sailors aloft.  And suddenly, as though it had but just commenced, Bob again became aware of the saw shrieking in ecstasy as it plunged into a pine log.