“That’s the interesting thing about Galveston. It does all this business, but it’s really only a small city. I doubt if there are more than fifty thousand people here, and its total area is only about fifteen square miles. You could put it in one of New York’s pockets, so to speak. Yet it is the leading seaside resort in the southwest and more than a million pleasure-seekers visit Galveston every year.”
“Gee whiz!” said Roy. “They must be hustlers if so few people can handle so much traffic. It seemed to me it took almost five thousand stevedores and truck drivers just to load the Lycoming.”
Mr. Anderson laughed. “They can handle so much freight,” he said, “because everything is built so as to facilitate the work.”
He pointed out some grain elevators beside the wharf from which wheat was pouring through great spouts directly into waiting steamships, and he showed Roy water-front warehouses for steel materials, broom-corn, cotton, and other products.
“We shall dock beside a cotton warehouse,” said the chief engineer. “Step into the place when you go ashore and take a look at it.”
By this time the Lycoming was close to her berth. The chief engineer said good-bye and scrambled down the ladder. Roy watched Captain Lansford dock the steamer. He could not but admire the skilful way in which the commander laid the huge ship beside her pier as though she were a mere foot-boat. Then Roy came down to the lower decks and watched the passengers swarm ashore. Presently he went down the gangplank himself. He walked up and down the wharf, which felt very strange indeed because it did not move like the ship.
Presently he stepped into the cotton warehouse the chief engineer had pointed out to him. Its size amazed him. It was hundreds of yards long and many wide. Seemingly it contained thousands of huge bales of cotton, each weighing five hundred pounds. On the landward side freight trains were standing full of cotton. And the floors of trains, warehouse, and wharf were on a level, so that the cotton could be trucked direct from freight-car to steamer in one handling. Roy could not help contrasting this expeditious way of handling freight with the cumbersome system necessary in New York.
He was turning the matter over in his mind when the superintendent of the warehouse came along. Noticing Roy’s uniform, he stopped and spoke to him.
“Fine morning, sir,” he said. “Belong on the Lycoming?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Roy politely.