The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

Receiving and dispatching of ships
Various other matters related to shipping
The peeling white paint of the characters, here and
there worn thin, with the name of the company in an
antique hand, pleased Honda. The smell of the sea
poured forth, quite without restraint, from the list of
duties and functions.
He looked up the stairs. All was quiet.
Below and behind him, to the northwest, beyond the
prefectural highway and the town, where pinwheels
caught the light over carp streamers on new blue-tiled
roofs, lay the complex of Shimizu Harbor, a
crisscrossing of cranes on land and derricks on ships,
white silos of factories and black hulls, iron bleached
by the sea winds and thickly painted chimneys, one
mass stopping at the shore, the other coming in from
the several seas; there in the distance was the
mechanism of the harbor laid bare, meeting at the
appointed spot, glaring across the line. And the
shining dismembered snake of the sea.
Fuji rose far above the hills. Only the summit was
visible, as if a great sharp white boulder had been
flung up through the uncertainty of the clouds.
Honda stopped to look.