Chapter Text
The wind blowing off the water had a keen edge. It reminded one that even the majestic passenger liners were still taking due note of ice warnings on their inbound and outbound journeys, and that May was not yet so far advanced as to preclude the possibility of a last, late snowstorm.
This part of the waterfront was far from the patrician enclave reserved to the passenger traffic. Here cranes worked ceaselessly to unload the holds of the incoming freighters and trucks waited to rush the cargo to the rail-heads; the visible part of a vast machine whose unceasing energies were dedicated to slaking the insatiable hungers of the most powerful nation on earth.
The young man passing briskly - despite his visible limp - through the district had turned the collar of his coat against the cold, and kept his soft hat down over his ears. From time to time he consulted directions on a piece of paper.
Not without a false turn or so the young man found his destination at last; a small eating establishment - hard to say, in this mongrel district, how to describe it more precisely. It clearly had pretensions to restaurant status: its clientele was drawn from among the commercial agents and merchant skippers, not the stevedores of the waterfront. But it seemed unlikely that anyone not drawn by business into the neighbourhood would have considered it worth the detour. Accordingly, as the young man entered a few heads turned curiously after him; although strangers were plentiful in this place where the machine demanded the tireless labours of an army of transients few were of his type, and those who were spelled trouble more often than not. A journalist - an earnest and worthy compiler of statistics - even, perhaps, a spy.
There was a visible easing of tension when a diner in one of the booths - who would have been instantly recognisable as a British ship's officer even if he had not been in uniform - spotted the new arrival and signalled with a lazy wave of his arm.
The young man nodded, and picked his way through the packed tables towards his friend. His mouth had opened to say something when the man in uniform reached out a hand to clasp his wrist firmly.
"Welcome home, Spud," he said.