The clearing wind had
hauled to the northwest. The sky was heaped with soft clouds
floating in the blue. At the base of the hill nestled the
buildings and wharves of the Lighthouse Depot, with the unfinished
sea-wall running out from the shore, fringed with platforms and
bristling with swinging booms--the rings of white steam twirling
from the exhaust-pipes.
On either side of the vast basin lay two grim, silent forts,
crouched on grassy slopes like great beasts with claws concealed.
Near by, big lazy steamers, sullen and dull, rested motionless at
Quarantine, awaiting inspection; while beyond, white-winged
graceful yachts curved tufts of foam from their bows. In the
open, elevators rose high as church steeples; long lines of
canal-boats stretched themselves out like huge water-snakes, with
hissing tugs for heads; enormous floats groaned under whole trains
of cars; big, burly lighters drifted slowly with widespread
oil-stained sails; monster derricks towered aloft, derricks that
pick up a hundred-ton gun as easily as an ant does a grain of
sand--each floating craft made necessary by some special industry
peculiar to the port of New York, and each unlike any other craft
in the harbor of any other city of the world.
Grogan's house and stables lay just over the brow of this hill, in
a little hollow.
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