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"You can go swimmin' in the ocean at the Isle of Palms," said Max Isaacs. Then, reverently, he added: "You can go to the Navy Yard an' see the ships."

In the autumn, at the beginning of his fifteenth year -- his last year at Leonard's -- Eugene went to Charleston on a short excursion. He found a substitute for his paper route.

"Come on!" said Max Isaacs, whom he still occasionally saw. "We're going to have a good time, son."

His father was a plumber. He did not want to be a plumber. He wanted to join the navy and see the world. In the navy, a man was given good pay and a good education. He learned a trade. He got good food and good clothing. It was all given to him free, for nothing.

He was waiting until he should be old enough to join the navy. He read the posters greedily. He knew all the navy men at the enlistment office. He had read all the booklets -- he was deep in naval lore. He knew to a dollar the earnings of firemen, second class, of radio men, and of all kinds of C. P. O's.

"Yeah, man!" said Malvin Bowden, whose mother was conducting the tour. "You can still git beer in Charleston," he added with a dissipated leer.

"Yes'm," said Eugene. "Can I go? It's only for five days. I've got the money." He thrust his hand into his pocket, feeling.

"H'm!" said Eliza, with a bantering smile. "Why, say, boy, what do you want to do that for? You're my baby!"

It had been years since he was. She smiled tremulously.

"I tell you what!" said Eliza, working her lips, smiling. "You may wish you had that money before this winter's over. You're going to need new shoes and a warm overcoat when the cold weather comes. You must be mighty rich. I wish I could afford to go running off on a trip like that."

"I want to tell you, son," said Eliza, becoming grave, "you've got to learn the value of a dollar or you'll never have a roof to call your own. I want you to have a good time, boy, but you mustn't squander your money."

"Oh, my God!" said Ben, with a short laugh. He tossed his cigarette into one of the first fires of the year.

"Yes'm," said Eugene.

"For heaven's sake!" Ben cried. "It's the kid's own money. Let him do what he likes with it. If he wants to throw it out the damned window, it's his own business."

"Be a good boy," she said. "Don't get into any trouble down there." She thought carefully a moment, looking away. Then she went down in her stocking, and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

She clasped her hands thoughtfully upon her waist and stared away, pursing her lips.

"Well, I reckon it'll be all right," she said. "Mrs. Bowden will take care of you."

It was his first journey to a strange place alone. Eliza packed an old valise carefully, and stowed away a box of sandwiches and eggs. He went away at night. As he stood by his valise, washed, brushed, excited, she wept a little. He was again, she felt, a little farther off. The hunger for voyages was in his face.

"Don't waste your money," she said. "Here's a little extra. You may need it."

"Come here, you little thug!" said Ben. Scowling, his quick hands worked busily at the boy's stringy tie. He jerked down his vest, slipping a wadded ten-dollar bill into Eugene's pocket. "Behave yourself," he said, "or I'll beat you to death."

Max Isaacs whistled from the street. He went out to join them.

There were six in Mrs. Bowden's party: Max Isaacs, Malvin Bowden, Eugene, two girls named Josie and Louise, and Mrs. Bowden. Josie was Mrs. Bowden's niece and lived with her. She was a tall beanpole of a girl with a prognathous mouth and stick-out grinning teeth. She was twenty. The other girl, Louise, was a waitress. She was small, plump, a warm brunette. Mrs. Bowden was a little sallow woman with ratty brown hair. She had brown worn-out eyes. She was a dressmaker. Her husband, a carpenter, had died in the Spring. There was a little insurance money. That was how she came to take the trip.

Now, by night, he was riding once more into the South. The day-coach was hot, full of the weary smell of old red plush. People dozed painfully, distressed by the mournful tolling of the bell, and the grinding halts. A baby wailed thinly. Its mother, a gaunt wisp-haired mountaineer, turned the back of the seat ahead, and bedded the child on a spread newspaper. Its wizened face peeked dirtily out of its swaddling discomfort of soiled jackets and pink ribbon. It wailed and slept. At the front of the car, a young hill-man, high-boned and red, clad in corduroys and leather leggings, shelled peanuts steadily, throwing the shells into the aisle. People trod through them with a sharp masty crackle. The boys, bored, paraded restlessly to the car-end for water. There was a crushed litter of sanitary drinking-cups upon the floor, and a stale odor from the toilets.

The two girls slept soundly on turned seats. The small one breathed warmly and sweetly through moist parted lips.

The weariness of the night wore in upon their jaded nerves, lay upon their dry hot eyeballs. They flattened noses against the dirty windows, and watched the vast structure of the earth sweep past -- clumped woodlands, the bending sweep of the fields, the huge flowing lift of the earth-waves, cyclic intersections bewildering -- the American earth -- rude, immeasurable, formless, mighty.

His mind was bound in the sad lulling magic of the car wheels. Clackety-clack. Clackety-clack. Clackety-clack. Clackety-clack. He thought of his life as something that had happened long ago. He had found, at last, his gateway to the lost world. But did it lie before or behind him? Was he leaving or entering it? Above the rhythm of the wheels he thought of Eliza's laughter over ancient things. He saw a brief forgotten gesture, her white broad forehead, a ghost of old grief in her eyes. Ben, Gant -- their strange lost voices. Their sad laughter. They swam toward him through green walls of fantasy. They caught and twisted at his heart. The green ghost-glimmer of their faces coiled away. Lost. Lost.

Light broke against the east, in a murky rim. The far dark was eaten cleanly away. The horizon sky was barred with hard fierce strips of light. Still buried in night, they looked across at the unimpinging sheet of day. They looked under the lifted curtain at brightness. They were knifed sharply away from it. Then, gently, light melted across the land like dew. The world was gray.

"Let's go for a smoke," said Max Isaacs.

They went back and stood wedged for stability on the closed platform of the car. They lighted cigarettes.

Max Isaacs fumbled his cigarette awkwardly, looked at Eugene, and grinned sheepishly with delight, craning his neck along his collar, and making a nervous grimace of his white fuzz-haired face. His hair was thick, straight, the color of taffy. He had blond eyebrows. There was much kindness in him. They looked at each other with clumsy tenderness. They thought of the lost years at Woodson Street. They saw with decent wonder their awkward bulk of puberty. The proud gate of the years swung open for them. They felt a lonely glory. They said farewell.

The east broke out in ragged flame. In the car, the little waitress breathed deeply, sighed, and opened her clear eyes.

Charleston, fat weed that roots itself on Lethe wharf, lived in another time. The hours were days, the days weeks.

They arrived in the morning. By noon, several weeks had passed, and he longed for the day's ending. They were quartered in a small hotel on King Street -- an old place above stores, with big rooms. After lunch, they went out to see the town. Max Isaacs and Malvin Bowden turned at once toward the Navy Yard. Mrs. Bowden went with them. Eugene was weary for sleep. He promised to meet them later.

When they had gone, he pulled off his shoes and took off his coat and shirt, and lay down to sleep in a big dark room, into which the warm sun fell in shuttered bars. Time droned like a sleepy October fly.

At five o'clock, Louise, the little waitress, came to wake him. She, too, had wanted to sleep. She knocked gently at the door. When he did not answer, she opened it quietly and came in, closing it behind her. She came to the side of the bed and looked at him for a moment.

"Eugene!" she whispered. "Eugene."

"Oh, damn the Navy Yard!" he groaned. "I'd rather sleep."

"Out where?"

"We're all alone up here," said Louise smiling. "We've got the whole floor to ourselves."

"It's time to go out there," she said.

"Why don't you lie down and take a nap, if you're still sleepy?" he asked. "I'll wake you up," he added, with gentle chivalry.

He murmured drowsily, and stirred. The little waitress smiled and sat down on the bed. She bent over him and tickled him gently in the ribs, chuckling to see him squirm. Then she tickled the soles of his feet. He wakened slowly, yawning, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

He wakened at once, sensuously alert. He lifted himself upon one elbow: a hot torrent of blood swarmed through his cheeks. His pulses beat thickly.

"So would I!" she agreed. She yawned luxuriously, stretching her plump arms above her head. "I'm so sleepy. I could stretch out anywhere." She looked meaningly at the bed.

"What is it?" he said.

"I've got such a little room. It's hot and stuffy. That's why I got up," said Louise. "What a nice big room you've got!"

"To the Navy Yard. We promised to meet them."

"Oh -- I don't know. Not many," he said truthfully enough. He wanted to talk -- he wanted to talk madly, seductively, wickedly. He would excite her by uttering, in grave respectful tones, honestly, matter-of-factly, the most erotic suggestions.

"My!" she said. "I bet you're strong."

"Yes," he said. "It's a nice big bed, too." They were silent a waiting moment.

"Why don't you lie down here, Louise?" he said, in a low unsteady voice. "I'll get up," he added hastily, sitting up. "I'll wake you."

"Oh, no," she said, "I wouldn't feel right."

They were again silent. She looked admiringly at his thin young arms.

"I guess you like the tall ones, don't you?" said Louise. "A tall fellow wouldn't want a little thing like me, would he? Although," she said quickly, "you never know. They say opposites attract each other."

He was just at his fifteenth year.

"I'm going on sixteen," he said. "How old are you, Louise?"

"I'm eighteen," she said. "I bet you're a regular heart-breaker, 'Gene. How many girls have you got?"

He flexed his long stringy muscles manfully, and expanded his chest.

"My!" she said. "How old are you, 'Gene?"

"Is that enough?" she said, pulling her tight skirt above her calves.

"I don't know, Louise," he said, staring critically. "I can't see enough."

"What do you like best, 'Gene?" Louise asked.

"I don't like tall girls," said Eugene. "They're too skinny. I like them about your size, when they've got a good build."

"You haven't got an ugly face. You have a pretty face," said Eugene firmly. "Anyway, the face doesn't matter much with me," he added, subtly.

"Have I got a good build, 'Gene?" said Louise, holding her arms up and smiling.

"Were they prettier than mine?" said the waitress, with an easy laugh.

"Why," he said, "a woman ought to have pretty legs. Sometimes a woman has an ugly face, but a pretty leg. The prettiest legs I ever saw were on a High Yellow."

"I haven't got a pretty face. I've got an ugly face," she said invitingly.

She crossed her legs slowly and displayed her silk-shod ankle.

"Yes, you have a pretty build, Louise -- a fine build," said Eugene earnestly. "The kind I like."

He thought carefully and gravely.

"No," said Eugene.

"Yes," he said unsteadily. "I see."

"Mine don't hurt me," she said. She snapped the elastic with a ripe smack. "See!"

"Lord!" said Eugene, staring with keen interest at the garter. "I never saw any like that before. That's pretty." He gulped noisily. "Don't those things hurt you, Louise?"

"Is that?" she pulled her skirt back over her knees, and displayed her plump thighs, gartered with a ruffled band of silk and red rosettes. She thrust her small feet out, coyly turning the toes in.

Louise looked, and felt the garter gravely with a plump hand.

Her round young weight lay heavy against him, her warm young face turned blindly up to his own. His brain reeled as if drunken, he dropped his mouth awkwardly upon her parted lips. She sank back heavily on the pillows. He planted dry and clumsy kisses upon her mouth, her eyes, in little circles round her throat and face. He fumbled at the throat-hook of her waist, but his fingers shook so violently that he could not unfasten it. She lifted her smooth hands with a comatose gesture, and unfastened it for him.

"I should think they'd cut into your skin," he said. "I know mine do if I wear them too tight. See."

"Let me see," he said. He placed his trembling fingers lightly upon her garter.

"Uh-uh," she said, as if puzzled, "why?"

He pulled up his trousers' leg and showed his young gartered shank, lightly spired with hair.

She thrust her pink fingers slowly through his hair, drew back his face into her breasts again, moaned softly as he kissed her, and clutched his hair in an aching grip. He put his arms around her and drew her to him. They devoured each other with young wet kisses, insatiate, unhappy, trying to grow together in their embrace, draw out the last distillation of desire in a single kiss.

Then he lifted his beet-red face, and whispered tremulously, not knowing well what he said:

He lay sprawled, scattered and witless with passion, unable to collect and focus his heat. He heard the wild tongueless cries of desire, the inchoate ecstasy that knows no gateway of release. But he knew fear -- not the social fear, but the fear of ignorance, of discovery. He feared his potency. He spoke to her thickly, wildly, not hearing himself speak.

"Do you want me to? Do you want me to, Louise?"

"You're a nice girl, Louise. A pretty girl."

"You won't hurt me, 'Gene? You wouldn't do anything to hurt me, honey? If anything happens --" she said drowsily.

She drew his face down, murmuring:

"I won't be the first. I won't be the one to begin you. I've never started a girl off," he babbled, aware vaguely that he was voicing an approved doctrine of chivalry. "See here, Louise!" he shook her -- she seemed drugged. "You've got to tell me before --. I won't do THAT! I may be a bad fellow, but nobody can say I ever did that. Do you hear!" His voice rose shrilly; his face worked wildly; he was hardly able to speak.

He seized the straw of her suggestion.

She looked at him lazily. She smiled.

"I say, do you hear? Am I the first one, or not? You've got to answer! Did you ever -- before?"

"I may be mad, but I won't do that." He had become inarticulate; his voice went off into a speechless jargon. Gasping, stammering, with contorted and writhing face, he sought for speech.

"No," she said.

"I know you wouldn't, honey. I know you wouldn't. Don't talk. Don't say anything. Why, you're all excited, dear. There. Why, you're shaking like a leaf. You're high-strung, honey. That's what it is. You're a bundle of nerves."

She rose suddenly, and put her warm arms comfortingly around him. Soothing and caressing him, she drew him down on her breast. She stroked his head, and talked quietly to him.

"Put on your clothes," said Louise. "We ought to get started if we're going out there."

He wept soundlessly into her arm.

He became quieter. She smiled, and kissed him softly.

In his confusion he tried to draw on a pair of Mrs. Bowden's cast-off pumps. Louise laughed richly, and thrust her fingers through his hair.

The deck of the Oregon.

At the Navy Yard, they could not find the Bowdens nor Max Isaacs. A young sailor took them over a destroyer. Louise went up a railed iron ladder with an emphatic rhythm of her shapely thighs. She showed her legs. She stared impudently at a picture of a chorus lady, cut from the Police Gazette. The young sailor rolled his eyes aloft with an expression of innocent debauchery. Then he winked heavily at Eugene.

Louise put her small foot within the print of the greater one. The sailor winked at Eugene. You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.

"What's that for?" said Louise, pointing to the outline in nails of Admiral Dewey's foot.

"That's where he stood during the fight," said the sailor.

"You're crazy!" said he. "She's twenty-one."

"You're right!" said Malvin Bowden.

They loafed along the Battery, along the borders of ruined Camelot.

"She's eighteen," said Eugene.

"Yes," said Malvin Bowden, "a travelling man got her in trouble. Then he ran away."

"Aw!" said Max Isaacs. "Without marryin' her or anything?"

"Those are nice old places," said Max Isaacs. "They've been good houses in their day."

"I don't care," said Malvin Bowden, "she's no such thing. She's twenty-one. I reckon I ought to know. My folks have known her for five years. She had a baby when she was eighteen."

"He didn't do nothing for her. He ran away," said Malvin Bowden. "Her people are raising the kid now."

"Great Day!" said Max Isaacs slowly. Then, sternly, he added, "A man who'd do a thing like that ought to be shot."

"She's a nice girl," said Eugene.

Malvin Bowden stared at him.

"No," said Eugene, "she's eighteen. She told me so."

"Yeah," said Max Isaacs. "She's a nice lady." He craned his neck awkwardly, and squinted. "About how old is she?"

"Aw!" said Max Isaacs.

"They've let the place run down," said Malvin. "It's no bigger now than it was before the Civil War."

The bay was still: there was a green stench of warm standing water.

No, sir, and, by heaven, so long as one true Southern heart is left alive to remember Appomattox, Reconstruction, and the Black parliaments, we will defend with our dearest blood our menaced, but sacred, traditions.

"They need some Northern capital," said Max Isaacs sagely. They all did.

"Those are old Southern mansions," said Eugene, reverently.

An old woman, wearing a tiny bonnet, was led out on a high veranda from one of the houses, by an attentive negress. She seated herself in a porch rocker and stared blindly into the sun. Eugene looked at her sympathetically. She had probably not been informed by her loyal children of the unsuccessful termination of the war. United in their brave deception, they stinted themselves daily, reining in on their proud stomachs in order that she might have all the luxury to which she had been accustomed. What did she eat? The wing of a chicken, no doubt, and a glass of dry sherry. Meanwhile, all the valuable heirlooms had been pawned or sold. Fortunately, she was almost blind, and could not see the wastage of their fortune. It was very sad. But did she not sometimes think of that old time of the wine and the roses? When knighthood was in flower?

He looked greedily at wrought-iron gateways; the old lust of his childhood for iron-scraps awoke.

"You can TELL she's a lady," said Max Isaacs. "I bet she's never turned her hand over."

An old negro came by, fringed benevolently by white whiskers. A good old man -- an ante-bellum darkey. Dear Lord, their number was few in these unhappy days.

"Look at that old lady," whispered Malvin Bowden.

Philanthropy. Pure philanthropy. He brushed a tear from his een.

"They had the most men. If things had been even, we'd have beaten them."

"An old family," said Eugene gently. "The Southern aristocracy."

They were going across the harbor to the Isle of Palms. As the boat churned past the round brick cylinder of Fort Sumter, Malvin Bowden said:

Eugene thought of the beautiful institution of human slavery, which his slaveless maternal ancestry had fought so valiantly to preserve. Bress de Lawd, Marse! Ole Mose doan' wan' to be free niggah. How he goan' lib widout marse? He doan' wan' stahve wid free niggahs. Har, har, har!

"They didn't beat us," said Max Isaacs. "We wore ourselves out beating them."

"We were defeated," said Eugene, quietly, "not beaten."

They left the little boat, and ground away toward the beach in a street-car. The land had grown dry and yellow in the enervation of the summer. The foliage was coated with dust: they rattled past cheap summer houses, baked and blistered, stogged drearily in the sand. They were small, flimsy, a multitudinous vermin -- all with their little wooden sign of lodging. "The Ishkabibble," "Seaview," "Rest Haven," "Atlantic Inn,"-- Eugene looked at them, reading with weariness the bleached and jaded humor of their names.

"Aw!" he said.

"There are a lot of boarding-houses in the world," said he.

Max Isaacs stared at him dumbly.

A hot wind of beginning autumn rustled dryly through the long parched leaves of stunted palms. Before them rose the huge rusted spokes of a Ferris Wheel. St. Louis. They had reached the beach.

Malvin Bowden leaped joyously from the car.

"Kings! I've got kings, son," yelled Max Isaacs. He held up his crossed fingers. The beach was bare: two or three concessions stood idly open for business. The sky curved over them, a cloudless blue burnished bowl. The sea offshore was glazed emerald: the waves rode heavily in, thickening murkily as they turned with sunlight and sediment to a beachy yellow.

"Last one in's a rotten egg!" he cried, and streaked for the bathhouse.

"I'm not old enough," said Eugene. "You're not, either."

"I'm going to college," said Eugene. "I'm going to get an education and study law."

"No," said Eugene. "I can't."

"You'll have lots of time," said Max Isaacs. "You can go to college when you come out. They teach you a lot in the navy. They give you a good training. You go everywhere."

"I'm going to lie to get in," said Max Isaacs. "They won't bother you. You can get in. Come on."

"I'm going to join the navy, 'Gene," said Max Isaacs. "Come on and go with me."

They walked slowly down the beach toward the bathhouse. The tranquil, incessant thunder of the sea made in them a lonely music. Seawards, their eyes probed through the seething glare.

"Why not?" said Max Isaacs. "What are you going to do?"

'That's not old enough."

"I'll be sixteen in November," said Max Isaacs defensively.

"No," said Eugene. "I can't."

But his pulse throbbed as he listened to the lonely thunder of the sea. He saw strange dusky faces, palm frondage, and heard the little tinkling sounds of Asia. He believed in harbors at the end.

Louise came from the bathhouse and walked slowly toward him. She came proudly, her warm curves moulded into her bathing-suit: her legs were covered with stockings of green silk.

Mrs. Bowden's niece and the waitress came out on the next car. After his immersion he lay, trembling slightly under the gusty wind, upon the beach. A fine tang of salt was on his lips. He licked his clean young flesh.

Far out, beyond the ropes, Max Isaacs lifted his white heavy arms, and slid swiftly through a surging wall of green water. His body glimmered greenly for a moment; he stood erect wiping his eyes and shaking water from his ears.

Presently they came out, and walked over the wet strip of beach into the warm loose sand, bedding their dripping bodies gratefully in its warmth. The waitress shivered: he moulded sand over her legs and hips, until she was half buried. He kissed her, stilling his trembling lips upon her mouth.

Eugene took the waitress by the hand and led her into the water. She advanced slowly, with little twittering cries. An undulant surge rolled in deceptively, and rose suddenly to her chin, drinking her breath. She gasped and clung to him. Initiated, they bucked deliciously through a roaring wall of water, and, while her eyes were still closed, he caught her to him with young salty kisses.

Their hearts were filled with the lonely thunder of the sea. She kissed him. They were hill-born.

"I see it! I see it! The knife! The knife!… Do you see its shadow?… There! There! There!"

"What did they tell you about me?" she said. "Did they talk about me?"

He returned in late September.

With Boothian gusto he recoiled, pointing to invulnerable nothings.

"No," he said. "I'll never forget you, Louise. So long as I live."

"You won't remember me, honey, when you start going with the girls. You'll forget about me. Some day you'll see me, and you won't even know me. You won't recognize me. You'll pass without speaking."

Rising at night, he would rouse the sleeping house with his cries, commanding terror with his old magnificence.

In October, Gant, with Ben and Helen, departed for Baltimore. The operation, too long deferred, was now inevitable. His disease had grown steadily worse. He had gone through a period of incessant pain. He was enfeebled. He was frightened.

"I don't care," he said. "I don't care about that. I like you."

"I like you! I like you a lot!" he said.

"Don't worry," said the nurse encouragingly, "the mortality's only four per cent. It used to be thirty. He's reduced it."

Gant lay in a long cot in the Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins. Every day a cheerful little man came briskly in and looked at his chart. He talked happily and went away. He was one of the greatest surgeons in the country.

"Do you see him standing there in the shadows? So you've come at last to take the old man with you?… There he stands -- the Grim Reaper -- as I always knew he would. Jesus, have mercy on my soul!"

"Don't worry, old boy!" she said, "you're going to be as good as you ever were, after this."

But the little gray-haired man looked, shook his head regretfully, and trimmed deftly.

Gant groaned, and slipped his big hand into his daughter's vital grasp.

"All right!" he said, four minutes later, to his assistant. "Close the wound."

She fed him with her life, her hope, her love. He was almost tranquil when they wheeled him in to his operation.

Gant was dying of cancer.

"There," he said pointing, "is where I spent part of my boyhood. Old Jeff Streeter's hotel stood about there," he pointed.

Gant sat in a wheeled chair upon the high fifth-floor veranda, looking out through bright October air at the city spread far into the haze before him. He looked very clean, almost fragile. A faint grin of happiness and relief hovered about his thin mouth. He smoked a long cigar, with fresh-awakened senses.

Gant thought of the years between, and the vexed pattern of fate. His life seemed strange to him.

"Dig down!" said Helen, grinning.

"We'll go to see all those places when you get out of here. They're going to let you out of here, day after tomorrow. Did you know that? Did you know you're almost well?" she cried with a big smile.

"I'm going to be a well man after this," said Gant. "I feel twenty years younger!"

"Poor old papa!" she said. "Poor old papa!"

Her eyes were wet. She put her big hands on his face, and drew his head against her.