About 7 A.M. we pulled alongside the wharf, and a light-hearted, jostling crowd struggled for the gang-plank.
I have not yet been able to find out why gang-planks are made so narrow, so that only one person at a time dare undertake the passage.
Chaos seemed to prevail. The deck suddenly became a struggling mass of humanity, struggling, tugging, and dragging at valises and kit bags.
Officers were manfully shouldering their "marching order," and struggling with their valises, hoping that their turn would come to find a footing on the gang-plank.
The gang-plank was long and narrow, bending and squeaking under its burden. There were two gang-planks: one to go down and one to come up.
But we were not sailors, and did not know the system; the inevitable result being that those going up met those coming down, until they became an unwieldy medley of men, baggage, protests, and apologies.
Gang-planks at the best of times appear structures of absurdity. They either appear to be placed at an angle so dangerous that the only safe way of getting ashore appears to be to sit down and slide. At other times the gang-plank has an unhappy knack of sagging in a precarious manner as you approach the middle, while a couple of sailors hold desperately on to the end to prevent its slipping off the dock.
Here we reported to the landing officer, who was making frantic endeavours to create order from chaos.
In circumstances of this kind the best thing to do with the landing officer is to keep clear of him. So we seized the only hack available and drove to one of the leading hotels, which had the reputation of being popular.
I am not quite sure if these conveyances are called hacks, but the name seems very appropriate; for carriage seems too dignified a term for such dilapidated vehicles.