For two miles the river was barely visible from the road, cut off by a string of warehouses and sheds. The road swarmed: trucks, donkeys, dockers, on the landward side shops and markets; thousands of men, women and children toting, shouting, buying, selling. A white man, mustachioed, in a pith helmet: Morrison stared unbelieving. Twice, grade crossings. They pushed along in low gear, declining manslaughter time and again; before them and behind them were trucks and wagons enduring the same slow pilgrimage. Their goal was government wharf number one, the last of the line and the deepest anchorage. The crowd thinned toward the end, and they drove the last half mile in second gear. Tall Boy was strangely courteous, gesturing in courtly fashion at pedestrians, clucking at menaced fowl, laughing with children. Just before the sea-wall they turned left, and there was the mouth of the muddy river, a hundred yards off, and when they had rounded the sheds and were on the waterfront itself, Morrison saw the straight line of railroad tracks, and freights and engines, running back the full two miles.
