“Anything I can do for you?”
“Thanks. I think not,” said Roy. “I was just admiring your warehouse.”
The superintendent’s face lighted up. “Ain’t she a daisy?” he said. “One of the finest in the world. Step in and look around.”
“My!” said Roy, “you’ve a lot of cotton here.”
“A mere handful, my boy, a mere handful,” repeated the superintendent. “Our cotton concentration plants here can accommodate a million bales, sir, a million bales. We’ve handled four million bales in a year at this port, sir.”
Roy stepped across the warehouse to look at the cotton cars, but his eye was instantly caught by the long lines of car tracks that ran parallel with the wharves. The superintendent noticed his astonishment.
“There are more than seventy-five miles of tracks abutting on our water-front,” he said, “so you see we can handle a heap of stuff.”
Roy whistled in amazement. “How do trains get here?” he asked. “This is an island, isn’t it?”
“It sure is an island,” replied the superintendent, “but we are connected with the mainland by a big causeway of reinforced concrete, like the sea-wall. It’s two miles long, and has three railroad tracks, a roadway for vehicles, and a path for pedestrians. It cuts right across the Bay from the island to Virginia Point on the mainland. You can see it from here.” And the obliging warehouseman showed Roy the huge stone roadway spanning the Bay.