and means in our Yards now, more highly than ever to respect the
forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held the sea,
without them. This remembrance putting me in the best of tempers
with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally dim
and patched, I pull off my hat to her. Which salutation a callow
and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment,
perceiving, appropriates – and to which he is most heartily
welcome, I am sure.
Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular
saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric
action, I come to the sauntering part of my expedition, and
consequently to the core of my Uncommercial pursuits.
Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens
of its quiet and retiring character. There is a gravity upon its
red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing
worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw
out of England. The white stones of the pavement present no other
trace of Achilles and his twelve hundred banging men (not one of
whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional echoes. But for a
whisper in the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oarmaking
and the saws of many movements might be miles away. Down
below here, is the great reservoir of water where timber is steeped
in various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process. Above
it, on a tramroad supported by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter’s
Car, which fishes the logs up, when sufficiently steeped, and rolls
smoothly away with them to stack them. When I was a child (the
Yard being then familiar to me) I used to think that I should like
to play at Chinese Enchanter, and to have that apparatus placed at
my disposal for the purpose by a beneficent country. I still think
that I should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in
it. Its retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among
the stacks of timber would be a convenient kind of travelling in
foreign countries – among the forests of North America, the sodden
Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and the
tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunderstorms. The costly store
of timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered places, with
the pervading avoidance of flourish or effect. It makes as little
of itself as possible, and calls to no one ‘Come and look at me!’
And yet it is picked out from the trees of the world; picked out
for length, picked out for breadth, picked out for straightness,
picked out for crookedness, chosen with an eye to every need of
ship and boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the
sight of shipwrights. Sauntering through these groves, I come upon
an open glade where workmen are examining some timber recently
delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, with a background of river and
windmill! and no more like War than the American States are at
present like an Union.
Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful
indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
process as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my
bad dreams – they were frightful, though my more mature
understanding has never made out why – were of an interminable sort
of ropemaking, with long minute filaments for strands, which, when
they were spun home together close to my eyes, occasioned
screaming. Next, I walk among the quiet lofts of stores – of
sails, spars, rigging, ships’ boats – determined to believe that
somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight
of a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted,
he comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door.
Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery send
down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such