The Saturday Evening Post/A Little Matter of Salvage

A Little Matter of Salvage
The fighting Scotchman Hangs On
By PETER B. KYNE
LUMBER freights were decidedly off. As a matter of fact, the market had gone to pieces, and "Old" Hickman was disturbed. Standing before the grimy window of his private office in the faded old red-brick building in East Street, Old Hickman looked out over the waterfront- out across the bay, beyond Goat Island, to where the fleecy clouds drifted over the summit of Mount Diablo. Before him the white ferryboats surged backward and forward between the big ferry depot and the Oakland mole.
Up the bay, toward Mission Rock, an Italian cruiser swung at anchor, side by side with three big battle-ships of the Pacific squadron. Beyond the warships a score of full-rigged ships lay awaiting grain charters.
There was something in that forest of masts—in the little launches coughing to and fro between the great hulls, with their black-painted ports looming up along the gray sides—something in that grand panorama of wharf and bay and mountain that soothed and thrilled Old Hickman always. In all his busy life he had known no odor so sweet as the smell of the docks. He sniffed it now through the open window as it floated u

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