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have driven west eternally, rediscovering and rebuilding and moving on until civilization would assume the aspects of a six-day bike race with new possibilities at each bend. . . .”
    Wesley, walking around the coal pile with his talkative friend, addressed the man with the shovel.
    â€œHey there, Pops! Don’t work too hard!”
    The man looked up and smiled happily: “Watch out there, man!” he shouted with whooping delight, leaning on his shovel. “You is talkin’ out mah league—I doan split no gut! Hoo hoo hoo!”
    â€œThat’s the ticket, Pops!” said Wesley, looking back with a smile.
    â€œI swear to God,” resumed Everhart, adjusting his glasses, “if this were 1760 I’d be on my way West with the trappers, explorers, and the huntsmen! I’m not rugged, the Lord knows, but I want a life with purpose, with a driving
force and a mighty one at that. Here I am at Columbia, teaching—what of it? I accomplish nothing; my theories are accepted and that’s all there is to it. I have seen how ideas are accepted and set aside for reference . . . that is why I gave up writing a long time ago. I’m thirty-two now; I wouldn’t write a book for a million. There’s no sense to it. Those lynx-eyed explorers—they were the American poets! The great unconscious poets who saw hills to the westward and were satisfied and that was that: they didn’t have to rhapsodize, their very lives did that with more power than a Whitman! Do you read much, Wes?”
    The were now on Broadway, strolling along the spacious pavement; Wesley stopped to peel his orange over a city refuse basket, and after a pause during which he frowned with dark pity, he said: “I used to know a young seaman by the name of Lucian Smith; he used to try to make me read, because I never did do much reading.” He dropped the last peel in the basket with a slow, thoughtful flourish. “Luke finally made me read a book; he was a good kid and I wanted to make him feel as though he done me a favor. So I read the book he gave me.”
    â€œWhat was it?”
    â€œ Moby Dick ,” recollected Wesley.
    â€œBy Herman Melville,” added Everhart, nodding his head.

    Wesley tore the orange in two and offered a half to his friend. They walked on, eating. “So I read Moby Dick ; I read it slow, about five pages a night, because I knew the kid would ask me questions about it.”
    â€œDid you like it?” Everhart asked.
    Wesley spat out an orange grain, the same grave frown on his countenance: “Yeah,” he answered.
    â€œWhat did the Smith kid ask you about it?” persisted Everhart.
    Wesley turned his troubled face on the interrogator and stared for a few moments.
    â€œAll kinds of questions,” he finally told him. “All kinds. He was a bright kid.”
    â€œDo you remember any of his questions?” Everhart smiled, conscious of his inquisitiveness.
    Wesley shrugged: “Not offhand.”
    â€œWhere is he now?”
    â€œThe kid?”
    â€œYes . . .”
    Wesley’s frown disappeared; in its place, an impassive, almost defiant stoniness manifested itself in his averted face.
    â€œLucian Smith, he went down.”
    Everhart shot a scowling look toward his companion: “You mean he was torpedoed and drowned?” Everhart
said this as though incredulous of such a thing; he rushed on: “He’s dead now? When did it happen? Why did . . . where was it?”
    Wesley thrust his hand in his back pocket, saying: “Off Greenland last January.” He produced his seaman’s wallet, a large flat affair with a chain attached. “Here’s his picture,” he announced, handing Bill a small snapshot: “Smith’s a good kid.”
    Everhart, taking the snapshot, was going to say something, but checked himself nervously. A sad face gazed out at him from the photograph, but he was too confused to make