Curious odors greeted him, as of sour vegetables and of unknown rank substances burning.

He stared like a visionary at the streaming multitude of alien shapes.
The coolie swerved, stopped, tilted his shafts to the ground.

Rudolph entered a sombre, mouldy office, where the darkness rang with tiny silver bells.

Pig-tailed men in skull-caps, their faces calm as polished ivory, were counting dollars endlessly over flying finger-tips.

One of these men paused long enough to give him a sealed dispatch,--the message to which the ocean-bed, the Midgard ooze, had thrilled beneath his tardy keel.
"Zimmerman recalled," the interpretation ran; "take his station; proceed at once." He knew the port only as forlorn and insignificant.