First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

He soon got beyond the respectable streets, the level even rows of brown-stone houses standing shoulder to shoulder like well-drilled servants in a livery; the shops began, and the iron-balconied tenements, and the noise and sense of much humanity. The many sins of the pavement were charitably hidden in the snow; but even then there was a smell about the neighborhood that would have nauseated Mrs. Gower; and even in the middle of the night there was noise of living, and an undertone of working steam, throbbing still, among the sleeping places of its human fellow-laborers. Nor were they all asleep; here and there a lighted window, and what we needs must term a sound of revelry, showed that some of these, too, like their Fifth Avenue superiors, were wakeful to the pleasures of the night.

But the elevated trains had ceased running, as Starbuck crossed Third Avenue: the toiling places of the human workmen, at least, were stilled, and these were not needed to take them to and from their benches in the social galley. Mankind—except indeed the policemen or other watchers who had to see that mankind did no mischief while it rested—was not at work.

Starbuck threaded his way through the streets along the river. The forges, to be sure, were glowing brightly; for Iron gives his servants no rest; Vulcan is a lord who knows no Sabbath; he compels, unlike kindly Ceres, from eve till dewy morn, from seed to harvest. Starbuck came to the wharves, heaped up with coal mountains, built over with iron prisons for the gas; he looked about him, cautiously, for he was physically a coward and afraid of footpads, of the lawless gangs of roughs that infest the wharves. He had struck across the city too directly, instead of walking up Fifth Avenue, as he should have done, where he felt safe. He started once or twice in alarm, and his heart took to palpitating again, as he saw a dark figure among the wharves; but it would be only a policeman or a watchman, and he breathed more freely; and at last he reached the ferry in safety.

He took a seat in one corner of the ladies’ cabin, pulling his coat-collar up over his face. The boat was not full; but there were a number of people still out, returning from supper after the theatres. The warm weather they had had was breaking up the ice in the Sound; and the paddies of the steamer went crashing and grinding through the broken floes. Several times the wheels stopped, as if the pilot saw a field of ice too large to be crushed through. At last, the clanking of the chains told Starbuck they had reached the dock upon the Brooklyn side.

He waited until all the other passengers had gone ashore. The night had grown much colder; and the freezing snow and water crackled beneath his feet. On this side the river, however, the streets were darker, and quite deserted; and not one lighted window broke the high brick housewalls that closed about him on either side.

The effect of the unaccustomed dram of spirit had quite left him by this time; he threw open his coat for a moment, to light another cigar; and then buttoned it tight about him, cursing the cold. He had walked some half a mile or so, without meeting a living being, and had got beyond the region of the tenements, and in the manufacturing district of the city. Already he noticed the strong smell of oil, borne backward through the city by the northwest wind. His way led downward to the wharves; and he stopped before the familiar iron gate. He peered through it; he knew it to be the watchman’s station, or rather that of one watchman: there were two more down by the river side, whence the greatest danger was always apprehended. But he only saw the acres of tanks and stagings and pyramids of empty barrels, and beyond them, just visible, the high forest of masts tapering into the black sky, where, in the west, a few stars were already struggling out.

It was evident that the watchman, fearing, on such a night, no enemy but winter and rough weather, had sought some shelter; but Starbuck did not deem it wise to venture openly through the gate. He skirted the high fence around toward the river, where he knew there was a sort of swinging hatchway in the wooden wall; it was kept fastened only by an ordinary dropping latch inside, and this by inserting a length of wire in the crack, he easily lifted.

When he was fairly inside the yard, he sat down for a moment, smoking, and looked about him. The nearest lights were across the river or on the shipping in the stream; but the ground was white with snow, and the huge storage-tanks rose up about him, visible by their very blackness, like rocks at night in foaming water.

He got up, still smoking, but screening the cigar light in the hollow of his hand, and went toward the water. A double bank of the petroleum ships lay along the pier; but all was silent on board of them, the watch, if watch was kept while they were moored, having evidently followed the example of the watchman at the outer gate. Thus he made his way, slowly, to the end of the pier, losing his footing now and then in a snowdrift, or slipping suddenly into one of the great pits full of freezing water that had collected in the hollows of the ground. No vessels lay across the end of the pier, such mooring being forbidden; and it was unencumbered except by the great iron letters that stretched across it——THE SILAS STARBUCK OIL COMPANY. Starbuck leaned across the rod that supported the first letter S, and reflected. It was a curious fact that the identity of the name had never struck him particularly before; he knew nothing of old Silas Starbuck, nor who he was, nor whence he had come, nor even that Mrs. Levison Gower had been his daughter. Carefully he walked around the end of the wharves; thousands of men were at work there by day; but at night a more lonely place it would be hard to find, and he met no one.

At last, it seemed as if the object of this unusual journey were satisfied; and he began to retrace his steps toward the town. As he passed the first piles of barrels, he stopped and looked at them again; then picking up a stick, he struck one or two of them a smart blow. They were empty, and it rang hollow. He pushed the stick among them and between them to the ground; the snow that had fallen upon them had melted, and the lowest tier were half submerged in a pool of water. Then he left them and went on to the receiving-house.