A ship may sail from Newport News to Havana with coal, and while she is discharging at her berth may receive orders to proceed to Caibarien for a cargo of sugar. She grunts and shrieks and groans as the Havana stevedores take the coal ashore, her crew more or less idle, except for odd jobs, for crews of tramps attend to neither the discharging of cargoes nor the loading. Once the coal is ashore, however, the crew has a job. The ship must be fumigated, by order of the port authorities, and once fumigated the hatches must be lifted off, and the vast caverns into which the new cargo is to go must be swept and cleaned with care, for sugar does not mix too well with coal dust. And then the ship is off down the Cuban coast, riding high out of water, her propeller blades splashing half in and half out. If the weather is pleasant the holds may be cleaned on the way, and once she arrives off Cay Frances—for she cannot enter the shallow harbour of Caibarien—her captain orders the motor boat over the side, if he has one, and journeys a dozen miles to the little port. Here he tries to hurry the cargo lighters out to his anchorage, for it costs money to keep a ship idle. She is paying dividends only when she is on her way from port to port, and it is one of a captain’s important duties to do everything he can to get her on her way again. If his company has an agent at Caibarien, which is unlikely, the agent, too, tries to speed matters, but Cuban ways tend to slowness, and it is likely to be a day or two before a couple of barges are brought alongside, with a gang of Negro stevedores who slowly commence their operations. The derricks are rigged beside each hatch and the great bags come aboard in sixes or eights and are dropped into what seem to be the bottomless pits below the yawning openings. Far below, another group of stevedores cast the tackle off, and one by one the bags are packed, so as to fill the hold to the exclusion of a cubic inch of space not utilized. All day they load, and all night, for as one barge is emptied another appears. Relief crews of stevedores appear, and under a cluster of lights hanging from bridge or mast they labour—their toil seemingly endless, but gradually, nevertheless, approaching its conclusion. Lower and lower the ship sinks into the water. Her propeller blades disappear, and down and down she goes. No longer is she the wall-sided affair that anchored a day or two before. And finally, as the bags reach up and up to the combings of the hatch, she is down once more, until her Plimsoll mark, which is cut in her side by Lloyd’s to show how deep she is permitted to ride, is washed by every wave. A few more bags—the last big barge is empty—the last bit of space in her great holds is filled and she is ready for her voyage to Brooklyn.