Only when on board did the lads appreciate the enormous size of the dock. It would have been impossible to throw a baseball from one end to the other. The black sides rose above them like an iron canyon. Ranging down these precipices were innumerable huge iron stanchions for the shoring of ocean liners. Toward the forward end of the dock was a two hundred ton pile of coal, for the use of the tug, but it was dwarfed to the size of a kitchen supply by the black expanse around it. On the other side there were erected a few temporary wooden houses to serve as kitchen, dining room, and quarters for the crew on the voyage. There were a group of men loitering about these cabins.
The newcomers still stared at their gigantic surroundings when the interested Frenchman said politely:
"It ees large, beeg, yes?"
"Where's the boss?" inquired Leonard. "We've got jobs aboard this craft."
"He is making out the papers now, I think, and ees in a bad temper, too."
With this discouraging information, the two young men started for the officers' cabin. As they entered the place they met a crew of typical London longshoresmen coming out. Inside, a stocky purple-cheeked cockney stood at a little desk and glowered at them with small red eyes.
"'Ow's this?" he growled sharply, and in some surprise. "You are not in th' crew Hi picked hup."
"No, we applied at the office—"
"Hoffice, hoffice," snarled the man. "W'ot do they know about men, settin' hup there with their legs cocked hup? W'ot is it ye want anyway?"
Leonard silently offered a paper he had received from the British Towing and Shipping Company. The mate wrinkled his half inch of knobbly brow as he read the paper in a low undertone, after the manner of illiterate men.