Eagerly he watched a man working with an adze. The man was lying on his back and chipping overhead. Then the man turned on his side and chipped sidewise; then he chipped between his feet and in front of his feet. Was it not wonderful? He had never seen an adze, nor a man at work with an adze. Here, the man took off heavy chips and there only thin shavings; was it not wonderful? He wished to talk to the man, but the man was too busy; perhaps the man wished to keep his feet to walk home with. And all the other men were too busy to talk to him; they did not seem to know he was there, except one man near a kettle of hot tar who told him to get out of the way. And there were men boring holes in great planks; other men steaming planks, other men carrying planks, other men bending the planks against the ribs of the ship, other men driving in with sledgehammers great iron bolts to keep the planks in place, and these men, he guessed, had no time to talk to him. He wondered why the ships were all set stern-end toward the water. He wondered how “they” were going to get them into the water. And there were men who drove oakum—a new word—into the joints between the planks. They did it with a thin wedge and a funny looking mallet, and made a sound that beat upon his ear drums. He could get near enough to some of these men to talk to them, but they were too busy to hear him; and he saw men painting another ship which was all ready to be pushed into the water. And there was such a rush and crowd of things that were new to him that he was joyfully dazed—very happy, very serious.
He had his first view of the power of concerted action; but he did not look at it that way. To him it seemed the work of individual men working separately, or of small groups of men helping each other—a great crowd of men each doing his own work in his own way. To be sure, he saw men walking about who spoke to the workmen, and the workmen always had to listen to these men. In the great confusion he had not sensed order, and therefore did not ask Papa about it. Yet he saw the ships grow, and saw the workmen make them grow.
He walked all over the place with Papa, ever inquisitive, peering here and there. The hum of work was everywhere. He keenly sensed its greatness. What could men not do if they could do this, and if they could make a great bridge—suspended in the air over the Merrimac. He poured forth his questions and Papa answered them pretty well, but a bit pedantically where he was not posted. He used too many big words. He concealed with them what he did not know.
A few days later father and son saw the launching of a ship, and the child had another spasm of wonder, for the ship seemed to him to launch itself; he did not see any men pushing it, and Father recited something about “she seems to feel the thrill of life along her keel,” which he said was poetry because it all rhymed, so the child learned at once what poetry was—it was a new word. And again came the regular questionnaire, and again Father did his best, using however, so many strange long words that the child became drugged and drowsy with them and said he wanted to go home; so they both, father and son, went home.
And soon the child began to tease to be taken to Plum Island, to see the ocean his father had talked about. Strangely enough there wasn’t any ocean at South Reading, any more than there was a great river and a wonderful bridge there; any more than there was a great shipyard and a great harbor. At South Reading there was only a railroad and two ponds—a big pond and a little pond and some hills. So the son, accompanied by the father, went to Plum Island, for he had said, “This is to be mine, isn’t it, Papa?” And the father had relaxed at the idea.
There they stood, in a stiff salt breeze, on the sharply sloping rounded beach; some drifting clouds in a pale sky, some ships in the offing. True, he had seen the ocean at Cape Ann, seen it in furious, terrifying, storming moods; seen it as huge glossy ground swells, as glancing, dancing wavelets in the sunshine; but that was long, long ago when he was three; he had wholly forgotten what happened when he was three—and four—and five. He had forgotten even that he had fallen into a well there. He had, like the workmen in the shipyard, been too busy—all these years, these months, these days.
Even South Reading was fading before the glory of the new-risen day; this engulfing splendor of Newburyport, as they stood there, on the hard wet sand, two figures solitary, a mere speck, a minute accent on the monotonous miles of beach and pounding surf. The child looked far seaward, without emotion, save a sense of dull platitude, of endless nothingness, of meaningless extension. The sea was merely
