The Open Boat and Other Stories
possibilities of the man's dreams. But to the youth these were not
merely the shrieks of a vision-pierced man: they were an utterance of
the meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest
of the wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbable granite wheels,
and who then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not
from him, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a
people. This, weaving into the young man's brain, and mingling with his
views of the vast and sombre shadows that, like mighty black fingers,
curled around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not
sleep, but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagre
experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing
agony of his imaginations.
Finally a long lance-point of grey light shot through the dusty panes
of the window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white
in the dawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until
the golden rays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They
touched with radiant colour the form of a small fat man, who snored
in stuttering fashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly
with the valour of a decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore
fretfully, and pulled his blanket over the ornamental splendours of his
head.
The youth contentedly watched this rout of the shadows before the
bright spears of the sun, and presently he slumbered. When he awoke
he heard the voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting
up his head, he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot
engaged in scratching his neck with long finger-nails that rasped like
files.
"Hully Jee, dis is a new breed. They've got can-openers on their feet."
He continued in a violent tirade.
The young man hastily unlocked his closet and took out his shoes
and hat. As he sat on the side of the cot lacing his shoes, he
glanced about and saw that daylight had made the room comparatively
common-place and uninteresting. The men, whose faces seemed stolid,
serene or absent, were engaged in dressing, while a great crackle of
bantering conversation arose.
A few were parading in unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men
of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses,
standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly
garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and
deficiencies of all kinds.
There were others who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders were
slanting, humped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable
among these latter men was the little fat man, who had refused to allow
his head to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled
to and fro, while he swore in fish-wife fashion. It appeared that some
article of his apparel had vanished.
The young man attired speedily, and went to his friend the assassin.
At first the latter looked dazed at the sight of the youth. This face
seemed to be appealing to him through the cloud wastes of his memory.
He scratched his neck and reflected. At last he grinned, a broad smile
gradually spreading until his countenance was a round illumination.
"Hello, Willie," he cried cheerily.
"Hello," said the young man. "Are yeh ready t' fly?"
"Sure." The assassin tied his shoe carefully with some twine and came
ambling.
When he reached the street the young man experienced no sudden relief
from unholy atmospheres. He had forgotten all about them, and had been
breathing naturally, and with no sensation of discomfort or distress.
He was thinking of these things as he walked along the street, when he
was suddenly startled by feeling the assassin's hand, trembling with
excitement, clutching his arm, and when the assassin spoke, his voice
went into quavers from a supreme agitation.
"I'll be hully, bloomin' blowed if there wasn't a feller with a
nightshirt on up there in that joint."
The youth was bewildered for a moment, but presently he turned to smile
indulgently at the assassin's humour.
"Oh, you're a d----d liar," he merely said.
Whereupon the assassin began to gesture extravagantly, and take oath by
strange gods. He frantically placed himself at the mercy of remarkable
fates if his tale were not true.
"Yes, he did! I cross m'heart thousan' times!" he protested, and at
the moment his eyes were large with amazement, his mouth wrinkled in
unnatural glee.
"Yessir! A nightshirt! A hully white nightshirt!"
"You lie!"
"No, sir! I hope ter die b'fore I kin git anudder ball if there wasn't
a jay wid a hully, bloomin' white nightshirt!"
His face was filled with the infinite wonder of it. "A hully white
nightshirt," he continually repeated.
The young man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was
a sign which read "No mystery about our hash!" and there were other
age-stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place
was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin.
"I guess I'll git somethin' t' eat."
At this the assassin, for some reason, appeared to be quite
embarrassed. He gazed at the seductive front of the eating place for a
moment. Then he started slowly up the street. "Well, good-bye, Willie,"
he said bravely.
For an instant the youth studied the departing figure. Then he called
out, "Hol' on a minnet." As they came together he spoke in a certain
fierce way, as if he feared that the other would think him to be
charitable. "Look-a-here, if yeh wanta git some breakfas' I'll lend
yeh three cents t' do it with. But say, look-a-here, you've gota git
out an' hustle. I ain't goin' t' support yeh, or I'll go broke b'fore
night. I ain't no millionaire."
"I take me oath, Willie," said the assassin earnestly, "th' on'y thing
I really needs is a ball. Me t'roat feels like a fryin'-pan. But as I
can't get a ball, why, th' next bes' thing is breakfast, an' if yeh do
that for me, b' Gawd, I say yeh was th' whitest lad I ever see."
They spent a few moments in dexterous exchanges of phrases, in which
they each protested that the other was, as the assassin had originally
said, "a respecter'ble gentlem'n." And they concluded with mutual
assurances that they were the souls of intelligence and virtue. Then
they went into the restaurant.
There was a long counter, dimly lighted from hidden sources. Two or
three men in soiled white aprons rushed here and there.
The youth bought a bowl of coffee for two cents and a roll for one
cent. The assassin purchased the same. The bowls were webbed with brown
seams, and the tin spoons wore an air of having emerged from the first
pyramid. Upon them were black moss-like encrustations of age, and they
were bent and scarred from the attacks of long-forgotten teeth. But
over their repast the wanderers waxed warm and mellow. The assassin
grew affable as the hot mixture went soothingly down his parched
throat, and the young man felt courage flow in his veins.
Memories began to throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth long
tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as
from an old woman. "---- great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin'
though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t'
lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, an' I lose me job."
"South no good. Damn niggers work for twenty-five an' thirty cents a
day. Run white man out. Good grub though. Easy livin'."
"Yas; useter work little in Toledo, raftin' logs. Make two or three
dollars er day in the spring. Lived high. Cold as ice though in the
winter."
"I was raised in northern N'York. O-o-oh, yeh jest oughto live there.
No beer ner whisky though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot
grub yeh can eat. B' Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till
th' ol' man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git
t' hell outa here, an' go die,' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father,' I
ses, 'you are,' an' I quit 'im."
As they were passing from the dim eating place, they encountered an old
man who was trying to steal forth with a tiny package of food, but a
tall man with an indomitable moustache stood dragon fashion, barring
the way of escape. They heard the old man raise a plaintive protest.
"Ah, you always want to know what I take out, and you never see that I
usually bring a package in here from my place of business."
As the wanderers trudged slowly along Park Row, the assassin began to
expand and grow blithe. "B' Gawd, we've been livin' like kings," he
said, smacking appreciative lips.
"Look out, or we'll have t' pay fer it t'night," said the youth with
gloomy warning.
But the assassin refused to turn his gaze toward the future. He went
with a limping step, into which he injected a suggestion of lamblike
gambols. His mouth was wreathed in a red grin.
In the City Hall Park the two wanderers sat down in the little circle
of benches sanctified by traditions of their class. They huddled in
their old garments, slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours
which for them had no meaning.
The people of the street hurrying hither and thither made a blend of
black figures changing yet frieze-like. They walked in their good
clothes as upon important missions, giving no gaze to the two wanderers
seated upon the benches. They expressed to the young man his infinite
distance from all that he valued. Social position, comfort, the
pleasures of living, were unconquerable kingdoms. He felt a sudden awe.
And in the background a multitude of buildings, of pitiless hues and
sternly high, were to him emblematic of a nation forcing its regal
head into the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity
of its aspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet.
The roar of the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange
tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice of
the city's hopes which were to him no hopes.
He confessed himself an outcast, and his eyes from under the lowered
rim of his hat began to glance guiltily, wearing the criminal
expression that comes with certain convictions.
THE MEN IN THE STORM
The blizzard began to swirl great clouds of snow along the streets,
sweeping it down from the roofs, and up from the pavements, until
the faces of pedestrians tingled and burned as from a thousand
needle-prickings. Those on the walks huddled their necks closely in the
collars of their coats, and went along stooping like a race of aged
people. The drivers of vehicles hurried their horses furiously on their
way. They were made more cruel by the exposure of their position, aloft
on high seats. The street cars, bound up town, went slowly, the horses
slipping and straining in the spongy brown mass that lay between the
rails. The drivers, muffled to the eyes, stood erect, facing the wind,
models of grim philosophy. Overhead trains rumbled and roared, and the
dark structure of the elevated railroad, stretching over the avenue,
dripped little streams and drops of water upon the mud and snow beneath.
All the clatter of the street was softened by the masses that lay upon
the cobbles, until, even to one who looked from a window, it became
important music, a melody of life made necessary to the ear by the
dreariness of the pitiless beat and sweep of the storm. Occasionally
one could see black figures of men busily shovelling the white drifts
from the walks. The sounds from their labour created new recollections
of rural experiences which every man manages to have in a measure.
Later, the immense windows of the shops became aglow with light,
throwing great beams of orange and yellow upon the pavement. They
were infinitely cheerful, yet in a way they accentuated the force and