As Bob looked, a great, black horse appeared on one of these
aerial tramways, silhouetted against the sky. The beast moved
accurately, his head held low against his chest, his feet lifted and
planted with care. Behind him rumbled a whole train of little cars each
laden with planks. On the foremost sat a man, his shoulders bowed,
driving the horse. They proceeded slowly, leisurely, without haste,
against the brightness of the sky. The spider supports below them seemed
strangely inadequate to their mass, so that they appeared in an occult
manner to maintain their elevation by some buoyancy of their own, some
quality that sustained them not only in their distance above the earth
but in a curious, decorative, extra-human world of their own. After a
moment they disappeared behind the tall piles of lumber.
Against the sky, now, the place of the elephantine black horse and the
little tram cars and the man was taken by the masts of ships lying
beyond. They rose straight and tall, their cordage like spider webs, in
a succession of regular spaces until they were lost behind the mill.
From the exhaust of the mill's engine a jet of white steam shot up
sparkling.
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