It was like
the babble of some monstrous and harmless mythology. And all the while,
as he kicked his bare heels on the deckhouse and harassed me with his
somnolent greed for "talk," one could see him wondering, wondering, in
the back of his mind. So he would have been wondering through all the
hours of weeks, months--it had come to the dignity of years, on the
beach, in the bush--wondering more than ever under the red iron roof of
the Dutchman: "What in hell am I doing here? What in hell?"
A guttersnipe, pure and simple. That's to say, impure and unpleasantly
complex. It was extraordinary how it stuck. Even with nothing on but a
pair of cotton pants swimming out to me among the flashing bodies of the
islanders, men, women, girls, youths, who clung to the anchor cable and
showed their white teeth for pilot biscuit, condensed milk, and
gin--especially gin--even there you could see Signet, in imagination,
dodging through the traffic on Seventh Avenue to pick the _Telegraph
Racing Chart_ out of the rubbish can under the Elevated.--
I hadn't an idea who the fellow was. He burst upon me unheralded. I sail
out of west-coast ports, but once I had been in New York. That was
enough for him. He was "pals" in ten minutes; in fifteen, from his
eminence on the deckhouse, with a biscuit in one hand and a tumbler of
much-diluted Hollands in the other, he gazed down at his erstwhile beach
fellows with almost the disdainful wonder of a tourist from a white
ship's rail.
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