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shacks there were nigger wenches of all colors and shapes, halfbreed Chinese and Indian women, a few faded fat German or French women; one little mulatto girl who reached her hand out and touched his shoulder as he passed was damn pretty. He stopped to talk to her, but when he said he was broke, she laughed and said, “Go long from here, Mister No-Money Man . . . no room here for a No-Money Man.”
    When he got back on board he couldn’t find the cook to try and beg a little grub off him so he took a chaw and let it go at that. The focastle was like an oven. He went up on deck with only a pair of overalls on and walked up and down with the watchman who was a pinkfaced youngster from Dover everybody called Tiny. Tiny said he’d heard the old man and Mr. McGregor talking in the cabin about how they’d be off tomorrow to St. Luce to load limes and then ’ome to blighty and would ’e be glad to see the tight little hile an’ get off this bleedin’ crahft, not ’arf. Joe said a hell of a lot of good it’d do him, his home was in Washington, D.C. “I want to get out of the c——g life and get a job that pays something. This way every bastardly tourist with a little jack thinks he can hire you for his punk.” Joe told Tiny about the man who said his name was Jones and he laughed like he’d split. “Fifty dollars, that’s ten quid. I’d a ’ad ’arf a mind to let the toff ’ave a go at me for ten quid.”
    The night was absolutely airless. The mosquitoes were beginning to get at Joe’s bare neck and arms. A sweet hot haze came up from the slack water round the wharves blurring the lights down the waterfront. They took a couple of turns without saying anything.
    â€œMy eye what did ’e want ye to do, Yank?” said Tiny giggling. “Aw to hell with him,” said Joe. “I’m goin’ to get out of this life. Whatever happens, wherever you are, the seaman gets the’s—y end of the stick. Ain’t that true, Tiny?”
    â€œNot ’arf . . . ten quid! Why, the bleedin’ toff ought to be ashaymed of hisself. Corruptin’ morals, that’s what ’e’s after. Ought to go to ’is ’otel with a couple of shipmytes and myke him pay blackmyl. There’s many an old toff in Dover payin’ blackmyl for doin’ less ’n ’e did. They comes down on a vacaytion and goes after the bath’ouse boys. . . . Blackmyl ’im, that’s what I’d do, Yank.”
    Joe didn’t say anything. After a while he said, “Jeez, an’ when I was a kid I thought I wanted to go to the tropics.”
    â€œThis ain’t tropics, it’s a bleedin’ ’ell ’ole, that’s what it is.”
    They took another couple of turns. Joe went and leaned over the side looking down into the greasy blackness. God damn these mosquitoes. When he spat out his plug of tobacco it made a light plunk in the water. He went down into the focastle again, crawled into his bunk and pulled the blanket over his head and lay there sweating. “Darn it, I wanted to see the baseball scores.”
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    Next day they coaled ship and the day after they had Joe painting the officers’ cabins while the
Argyle
nosed out through the Boca again between the slimegreen ferny islands, and he was sore because he had A.B. papers and here they were still treating him like an ordinary seaman and he was going to England and didn’t know what he’d do when he’d get there, and his shipmates said they’d likely as not run him into a concentraytion camp; bein’ an alien and landin’ in England without a passport, wat wit’ war on and ’un spies everywhere, an’ all; but the breeze had salt in it now and when he peeked out of the porthole he could see blue ocean instead of the puddlewater off Trinidad and flying fish in hundreds skimming away