If the present alone is real, one might as well eat the damn' porridge. On Tuesday morning Reuben did so, admitting at once that the porridge was good as always, that the fault lay with his own jumpy stomach, his sandy-eyed weariness from a bad night. Ben also seemed depressed, or at least without the glow and buoyancy he had shown since his last return from Boston. Reuben had intended to offer a few not too classical flights concerning Aphrodite Anadyomene the sea-born, partly in the hope of learning whether love totally obliterated the sense of humor. He left them unsaid.

It might be abstraction, not depression, that ailed Ben. Experimentally, while his brother gazed moodily out the window, Reuben stole a sliver of bacon from his trencher; Ben never noticed. When Reuben replaced it, Ben did observe the action, vaguely startled, smiling and saying: "Thanks."

"Well, damn," said Reuben. Kate had watched the operation—vacantly and without chuckling.

"Uh? A'n't you hungry, Ru?"

"Damn again," said Reuben. "I am alway hungry. I own a tapeworm of the soul." He recaptured the bacon and popped it in his mouth. Ben was still merely looking puzzled. "'Twould appear that this morning I am penned up with mooncalves—even Kate won't laugh. And yet it's a fair day, a red sky last night." Kate turned her back with odd abruptness. And in his own dark privacy, it seemed to Reuben that he was like one who can behold the gathering of the crimson banners for Armageddon where others see only a flaming translation of natural clouds.

Something spoke then within him, so vividly that Reuben imagined at first he was recalling some remark of Mr. Welland's; but casting back, he felt certain that in their few meetings of the last weeks, the doctor had said no such thing: Learning begins now. Simply his own thought, taking on a verbalized form of uncommon clearness, of imperative power: LEARNING BEGINS NOW.

Ben had drifted back into his country of dream. Kate was, abnormally, not talking. Having breakfasted early as usual with Mr. Kenny, who had left for Boston, Mr. Hibbs was waiting in the schoolroom—perhaps not too impatiently, since work could always be done in odd moments on the immortality of the soul. The kitchen, not oppressed by dining-room demands of dignity, was rich with pleasant smells and the warmth of May. Reuben refilled his coffee cup.

If learning begins (ever) it must somehow begin with premises that will not betray. All men are mortal; Ben and I are men....

Death is the conclusion of known life. I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I believed, that a knowable life continues in a heaven or hell; therefore I am forced to doubt, what once upon a time I did believe, that Ben (or I, or Mother, or honest Jan Dyckman) can continue beyond the conclusion we call death.

Knowledge (Mr. Welland said last Saturday) pertains to what can be proven by the carnal senses.

Faith is belief in a proposition that cannot be established by the carnal senses—("My faith is like that of a man on a cloudy day....") Faith cannot be supported by knowledge, for if proof is found the proposition becomes knowledge and faith is no longer relevant; if it be not found, the proposition comes not within the region of knowledge.

Hope and desire—(must you rattle those pots, Kate, at this especial mortal moment?)—hope and desire may derive partly from knowledge, but cannot possess the force of it, for they are directed to the future, which does not exist. Therefore faith, hope and desire are all in the same class: to say that once upon a time I had faith in a heaven is no more than to say that I desired it, or hoped for it, or was told I ought to desire it—all without knowledge.

They say: "Help thou mine unbelief!" But belief and unbelief are no more to be helped or hindered than the eyes' perception of a cloud. If the eyes carry out their function and if the cloud be there, I shall see it. Why, so far as belief and unbelief are concerned, will, desire, hope, fear, pain have no part to play at all, let them be cruel as flame or powerful as time.

The mind, he understood, would continue proposing premises for all its life: some false, to be rejected; some (so far as the senses themselves can be trusted) true; every one of them to be examined in the atmosphere of doubt. Since without faith there is no other atmosphere.

A few strange years ago I walked on a quicksand, in a fog. Then it never occurred to me that the seeming certainties were a quicksand, the visions of Heaven a fog of fantasy. Am I any more likely to sink or stray, now that I know it? Proposition concluded pro tem.

As for Hell—Open up, old rat-hole! I may wish to spit.

"Ben," said Reuben, "do be a good boy and eat your bacon."

"Mm," said Ben, and smiled, and ate it.

Kate's unnatural silence was like a crying. Reuben made a private note to find out, if possible, what ailed her. The dregs of his coffee were still good for a bit more lingering.

You could not—in simple nature you could not listen to all the surrounding voices explaining and re-explaining, accusing, justifying, probing, forever contradicting one another and seldom pausing for an answer. You could heed only a few. Which ones? How to choose?

Love will choose some of the few, the nearest and surely the most important (including Kate). (The most important, why? Query noted, for future consideration.) Caution will select a few that must be heard, for reasons of safety and self-defense. And some will be chosen by native curiosity, which Mr. Welland described last Saturday as one of the rarest of all virtues.

Other voices speak outside the region of individual contact, some of them urgent. Micrographia; the old voice of Hakluyt if only because Ben loves it; Scripture, if only because the world is so obsessed with its thunderings; many others—even Ovid. Mr. Welland spoke of the dramatist Shakespeare; Uncle John has one volume of him—note: find and percontate, immed. These voices are not altogether unlike the near ones—more methodical, because the pen, unlike the voice, need not move in dizzy haste to get everything said before someone interrupts; more methodical and not so much given to hemming and hawing and conversational fluff; but these voices too are engaged in explaining and re-explaining, commanding, blurred sometimes in flurries of contradiction. Sometimes (Michael Wigglesworth for example) they sound downright embarrassed and peevish, when the stubborn universe they speak of is so plainly not as they describe it.

Since not all voices may be attended, since some of them lie and many more speak loudly in the absence of knowledge, one must wait, Reuben guessed, for the sudden inner waking, the unsought recognition, the mind's clear declaration: This voice—(Why did you say to me, "Run, boy! Run!"—why?)—this voice is speaking not merely out of some other's need to assert, but speaking to me, and I understand what it says—some of it....

If we create the present by living it, then right and wrong are man-made. I will accept the verdicts of others in this matter if they seem reasonable to me, and just—not otherwise.

It was once proposed to me on excellent authority that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. It seems to be necessary to hear much nonsense while waiting for the sound that rings true. I may be deceived again, many times, but I say it shall not be from any scared wish to believe.

Am I correct, Mr. Welland, in supposing that if doctrines of right and wrong are man-made, learning begins now?

Ben struggled through Tuesday morning's Greek and logic without serious discredit, and picked up only a few minor fresh scratches from the thorns of Latin grammar. He could not quite win clear of a mental shadow that had haunted him since waking after a dream not plainly remembered—a foreboding uneasiness something like that of a child who has wandered into a strange and exciting room: he has not been specifically forbidden to enter here, but knows he has not been granted permission either; presently someone may arrive and with the cool finality of adults chivy him back to the nursery where the toys have lost all magic.

In the afternoon Ben achieved brief glory, encountering an area of De Finibus in which Reuben had drilled him so briskly that error was nearly impossible. After this victory the deadly hour hand, the slightly less cruel minute hand, appeared to be creeping with better speed toward the beautiful moment of three o'clock, when Mr. Hibbs would snap his books shut, blow from the tops of them a little imaginary dust, and go away. Ru said once (a dreamy voice coming out of the dark of the bedroom when Ben thought he was asleep): "If I live to be old, I shall alway consider that the immortality of the soul sets in at three o'clock post meridian."

A resolution to go once more into Boston had grown today, less like a rational decision than like the climbing of a fever. With the lessons concluded, he would not, like a schoolboy, ask permission: he would simply go, as casually as Ru had been strolling over to Mr. Welland's cottage lately; if there should be consequences of disapproval from Mr. Hibbs or Uncle John himself, Ben supposed they would not be serious—in any case he could meet them with a man's calm, surely?

He tried (from two o'clock on) to lay it out serenely as a plan of campaign. One: he must speak with Faith again—briefly, soberly, a man of affairs saying a temporary good-bye. Two: he must interview Uncle John at the warehouse, in the cool atmosphere of business affairs, and pray for a definite answer, on the grounds that the time of Artemis' departure must be quite near. At this point the plan hazed up a little—Uncle John seldom stayed at the warehouse later than five o'clock. Well, Molly could make fair time into the city, and he would not remain long with Faith—he spent some effort here, defining a few poignant answers he would make to what she would say. Still, he had better prepare a second line of approach: if Uncle John had already left for Roxbury, he would seek out Captain Jenks himself, no less, beat down the devils of fear and self-consciousness so to put the matter plainly to the iron mountain and get an answer. After all, Jenks wasn't so bad. Honest and human. In fantasy Ben saw a gleam of rugged friendliness (respect?) in the little blue eyes....

Better have a third line. If Uncle John had left and Jenks could not be reached, lost in liquor or otherwise unavailable, then he could—oh, hell, ask around at the wharf anyway, find out when Artemis was expected to sail, since it seemed that Uncle John was unwilling to tell him. Tom Ball ought to know. Maybe he would run into Daniel Shawn again, and could, at the very least, learn whether Shawn was to sail as mate. On Sunday, Uncle John had been immune to approach, shut up in his study the better part of the day; yesterday evening he had displayed an impossible mood, his manner testy and faraway, his foot tormenting him. But with a plan of campaign you could always accomplish something. Couldn't you?...

He found it infuriating that as three o'clock drew very near the whole thing seemed more and more like a fever. His breath was difficult; he looked into damp palms and thought: What the devil am I contemplating? Running away? From what? Good God, not from Uncle John Kenny, the soul of generosity! From what?... He watched the inexorable dwindling of the pie-slice made by the hour-hand and the minute-hand as ten minutes of three became five minutes of three. At three minutes of three he felt downright sick, and then jumped like a fool when the dry uncomprehended monologue of Mr. Hibbs ended with a quite familiar snap of a closed volume. He sat still, demoralized, watching Mr. Hibbs stride away; waited for inner quiet and was again grotesquely startled when Reuben, in one of those warm moods which Ben nowadays found almost as strange as his moods of withdrawal, came behind his desk and leaned over to lock thin arms under Ben's chin and murmur: "What's the matter, Mooncalf?"

"Nothing, Ru—nothing. I think I'll go into Boston."

"Oh." Reuben broke the contact; Ben had found it vaguely comforting as well as disturbing. Reuben came around the desk, and re-established nearness by placing his hands over Ben's, hands thinner and smaller, but harder, sometimes even stronger. "Would you," said Reuben presently, "care to take a creeping crawling student of medicine into your confidence, not that the ancient creature wishes to intrude, but——?"

It was not always possible to look directly at Reuben. He saw too much, or if he did not, his quiet intentness made it seem that he did. The faces of others were apt to make it plain enough that they were not so much concerned with you as with themselves; Reuben (who surely thought about himself as much as anyone) somehow could put that preoccupation aside, and make you believe that nothing mattered to him at the moment except that jumble of thought and image and desire which you had grown accustomed to calling your Self. And it was, Ben thought, no illusion: the boy did search, and he did care for what he found. Ben fumbled for an evasion: "Student of medicine for sure?"

This proved to be no evasion after all, for Reuben smiled, and used the question itself as a part of the effort to illuminate the self of Ben Cory. "Yes, truly, and I wish you could find the same kind of certainty, Ben, because it's good. Why, I almost think, Ben, that anything could happen to me now—anything, no matter what—and though I might be hurt as much as I would have been, say a year ago, I could defend myself against my trouble, whatever it was: I could go and study another page of Vesalius' Anatomy. Or the books you bought for me. They wouldn't fade, I think. They wouldn't betray me.... Find something like that, Ben. Suppose you did change your mind about it after a while, at least you'd have it for now."

"But when I search myself I don't find it. I only...."

"Only what?" Reuben tightened his hands, relentless.

"I only wish—oh, I wish to God Uncle John would allow me to sail with Artemis."

Reuben let go his hands, and perched on Mr. Hibbs' sacred desk, swinging his feet, drooping a little, boyish and old, perhaps no longer searching. "You put it to him a few days ago, did you not?"

"Mm—he wouldn't say ay or no."

"You know Uncle John would find it difficult to disappoint thee."

"I am not a child."

"No," said Reuben, and with nothing in his voice to contradict the word. "What about this afternoon, that is what's left of it?"

"I thought I might see Uncle John at the warehouse. Ride home with him maybe."

"Ay, might be easier—he's a rather different man there at the office."

"It—seems not wrong to you, that I wish to sail?"

Reuben was long silent, drooping, looking into his empty hands. "Ben—'d I ever recount to thee the story of the woodcutter's stupid son who tamed a lion?"

"Woodcutter's son—I don't think so. Is it from Aesop?"

"No. Well, that's nearly the whole tale already. He found it as a cub. They grew up together, played together, the lion learning not to unsheath his claws, the woodcutter's son trying to roar like a lion, but 'tis said he made only some poor squeaking sounds that carried no great distance. They were yet friends when the lion was full grown, but then the poor brute in some manner sickened, fretted, vanishing at whiles and returning unwillingly, until at length the woodcutter's stupid son did arrive at one moment of wisdom, and took his friend into the forest and said to him, 'Go thy way.'"

"I am no lion."

"Marry come up, I am a shade more learned than that woodcutter's son. Ben, I'm only trying to say I don't think anyone should try to possess you, as I suppose Uncle John does, as maybe I've done—but if you wish to sail, if it's your decision and your heart in it, d'you think I'd impede you? Supposing I could?"

"No, I don't think you would."

"And I will not," said Reuben, and jumped off the desk. "I'm for Mr. Welland's, by the back fields. Best change thy jacket, Ben—that one beareth the slight saffron memory of an egg which hath gone before. I'll saddle Molly for thee, meanwhile."

When Ben rejoined him in the stable, Reuben had nothing more to say, except the light random murmuring that Molly enjoyed. Ben led her out into the yard—not in sight of Mr. Hibbs' window. Reuben said again, unnecessarily: "I'll go by the fields, you by the road."

As Reuben held the bridle, Ben was bewildered at his reluctance to set his foot in the stirrup. "Ru, what ails thee? It's not as if we were saying a good-bye."

"No. Why, man, if you sail, I also—well, I hope it turns out as you wish. I believe Uncle John heeds what you say, more than you suppose. Why the knife, little Benjamin?"

"Oh, I might be in the city after dark. I rather missed it that other night, coming home."

"Well, tuck it under your britches, can't you?—so to look less like a bloody cutthroat and more like my little brother?"

"Very well.... Ru, I don't know how to say this—lately I've been some-way troubled about thee."

"Oh, why, why? Have I two heads?—but don't answer that."

"As if we no longer understood each other—my fault, I think."

"It is not. It is not even true." Reuben still held the bridle, his face stiff and white and smiling. "No cause for trouble about me. I am one of the fortunate, didn't you know?"

"I don't understand."

"I own a shield. I walk in the woods. I read the Anatomy of Vesalius, and the books you bought for me. And I told you, Ben—they do not fade."

"Ay, there's that. Still, if I live to be a thousand I don't suppose I'll ever understand you."

"Must you, Ben?"

"I try."

"I have never understood another, and yet I think about them as much as you do."

"But—oh, I don't know how to say it—I don't think I meant that kind of understanding. There's more than one kind...."

"Ben, you'd best hurry a little if you're to have any time with Uncle John at the office."

"Yes," said Ben unhappily, and was in the saddle looking down, more than ever reluctant to be going away. "I'll tell you after supper, what he says. Ru, what was that?—you started to say that if I sail, then you also—?"

Ben had spoken softly, in his confusion. He supposed Reuben had not heard, for he did not answer, and that was a discourtesy Ben had never known him to employ. Ben saw him rub his hand along Molly's fat neck. "Be a good horse," said Reuben, and was gone, walking quickly around the stable, the shortest way to the back fields.

The cottage with the green shutters sat comfortably under the dignity of twin elms—like its owner mild, and quiet, and rather old, carrying age as an elm does with rugged awkwardness, with many scars, without pomp and circumstance.

Reuben had learned the inside of the cottage—simple, on the same stark plan as the house in Deerfield, with two main downstairs rooms and a garret, but where the Deerfield house had owned a small lean-to off the kitchen, Mr. Welland had a larger annex, more solidly built, which he called the surgery. It was also his reception room for patients, his library, his study, his room of contemplation. The gray striped lady, Goody Snively, who kept the cottage rather constantly supplied with kittens (often yellow), lived here in a box of her own beside the wood-box at the fireplace. Very few patients ever came to Mr. Welland here at the cottage, so few that he did not try to keep precise hours for them, but it was understood that he would ordinarily be at home in the late hours of the afternoon. Most of his work was done in visits that often took him a considerable distance to outlying farms. A small stable stood separate from the cottage, home of the brown mare Meg, who carried Mr. Welland on his labors in all weathers, all times of day or night. He claimed that Meg was a better diagnostician of the purse than himself, being always restless outside the houses of wealthy patients, who were invariably the slowest to pay his charges. That puzzled Reuben. "You'll learn," said Mr. Welland. "Your great-uncle is one of perhaps five exceptions to the rule that I can remember."

Mr. Welland kept no servant, and no one came in to clean or cook for him. He took most of his meals at the ordinary down the street; messages were left for him there more often than at the cottage. In the cottage he maintained a monastic neatness—no dust, no clutter, very few possessions and those necessary, functional and in good order. "It's not difficult," he had explained on Reuben's first visit, "but a servant or woman-by-the-day would make it so, and by the way, Reuben, my house is never locked, this door from hall to surgery never closed except when I have a patient with me. I like simplicity, seeing it leaves one free to consider complexity—especially that of persons who a'n't so smart as you and me. Don't trouble to knock, I don't like it. I hate knocking. If it's loud I jump out of my skin, if it's soft I blame it on the mice." "Mice, with that cat?" "Mice is a general term, boy. Mice includes everything that bothers by day or goes thump in the night. If a door squeaks I blame it on the mice for a week before I oil it. Everyone needs a devil, Reuben, and mice have served me bravely in that capacity for lo, these many years. Pull up a chair and be at ease."

On this Tuesday afternoon Reuben entered without knocking, an action that still caused him some shy discomfort, and spoke Mr. Welland's name unanswered. The door to the surgery stood open; also the stable door, as Reuben noticed through the window; the doctor was away, and this new loneliness an unexpected blow. "I am most unreasonable," said Reuben to Goody Snively, who rubbed his leg, and purred, and exercised a cat's privilege of trotting ahead and sitting down in front of his feet as he was about to go into the surgery. Reuben hooked her on his shoulder; she sang casually and damply in his ear as he went to the doctor's bookshelves and took down the Vesalius.

"This is a man——" well, certainly, but also not a man. A man is motion and thought; a man is foolishness, courage, love, pain. Reuben turned the pages at the desk, rather blindly trying to force them into some clearness, and he wondered if there had been any truth at all in what he had said to Ben less than half an hour ago. Vesalius had not faded—that much was true. The mist is in the observer.

Not only now, he thought, but always, in every observation, whether made at a favorable time or not. If I were happy, that also could deceive, a rosy mist no easier to penetrate than a gray one. If I were calm, neither sad nor happy—still a mist, of accepted thoughts that may be false as fog over quicksand. "But don't you see, Goody Snively?—we know one thing: we know the fog is there. And that, by the way, is my tender thigh and not a tree trunk. If you regard me as a tree, I may bark." Goody Snively retired—shocked, maybe.

The drawing before his face was lost to him a while, the room also, in a trance not of thought but of stillness avoiding thought. Then, as the body itself will usually shatter such a refuge with its own cantankerous insistence, Reuben's nose itched, his hands upholding his cheekbones grew sweaty and cramped. He gave it up and wandered about disconsolately. He knelt by the box to which Goody Snively had returned. Her latest kittens were quite new, their open eyes not focusing, their legs uncertain. He lifted the black-and-brindle one of the four and held it against his cheek, liking the harmlessly wild kitten smell; it mewed in small wrath, and Goody Snively began to look stern, so he replaced it at the consolation of the nipple and strolled away. He leaned in the open doorway of the front room, the room where Mr. Welland slept. Curious, but somehow not inappropriate, that this room like the rest of the house should be bare of ornament. Monastic was the word, but it held a sense of comfort too. A plain narrow bed, made up with sharp precision. One armchair, much worn in the seat; beside that an unpainted table, bearing a Betty lamp, a pitcher and a basin, nothing else. Two pairs of shoes—so the doctor owned three altogether—lined up at the side of the bed like little soldiers. Reuben thought of his own five expensive pairs, of the days in Deerfield when he had not always owned two pairs, of time and change and human virtue, of the froth of bright embroidery Kate had stitched at the buttonholes of the fine maroon waistcoat he now wore, and shut his eyes, wondering if that enameled snuffbox was the doctor's only luxury.

Opening them—but still holding away thought, or letting his eyes alone think for him—Reuben observed that one pair of Mr. Welland's shoes bore the marks of dried mud. The man must have changed in haste with no time to take care of them, or had forgotten. Reuben recalled noticing on a kitchen shelf a few cleaning rags and a jar of neatsfoot oil. He carried the yellowed shoes out there, refreshed the fading hearth-fire and sat by it to polish them. The crackle of new wood and the noise of his cleaning covered the light sounds of Mr. Welland returning and putting up Meg in the stable. Reuben was aware of it as the doctor opened the door, but the task was not quite done; he did not want to abandon it, or even to rise respectfully: work started ought to be finished, and as for the trivia of politeness, Amadeus Welland wouldn't care.

"What's this, Reuben?"

"It was something to do, sir. I couldn't bring my mind properly to the study, some-way. Besides, if this mud stays here too long it'll spoil the leather."

"Ay, but—thou, scrubbing my shoes? It's kind, Reuben, but I don't find it fitting."

"Sir, I do."

"Eh?" Reuben could not answer, nor look up when after a silence the doctor drew a chair to the hearth and sat there spreading his hands to the warmth. Yet he was not disturbed, nor worried—if Mr. Welland was annoyed, that would pass. It occurred to Reuben as his fingers (remembering Deerfield) worked the oil into the leather, that he had in fact never felt less troubled about his own behavior and how it might appear to another. It was simple, satisfying and natural that you should scrub mud from the shoes of someone you loved, taking it for granted that if the occasion ever happened to suggest it he would do the same for you. "Each time you have come here," said Mr. Welland at last, "you have been in some degree different, and also the same. Each time I must become acquainted with you again, and each time, I suppose, a little better, since I change too if only by learning."

"You remarked that living is a journey."

"Oh," said Welland, and sighed, "I fear that was little better than a simile after all, for what is the thing that travels and cannot itself remain wholly constant? All is change; all things flow; and what's more, I'd no idea those dem'd shoes had so much virtue left in 'em." Reuben could look up then and smile. "Well, Reuben, being in Boston yesterday, I called at thy great-uncle's office and spoke to him concerning thine apprenticeship. He is not averse to it, not at all, but would have thee continue for Harvard, and perhaps not be formally bound immediate, but later, if it is still thy wish in a year or so.... Pleased, my dear?"

"I—am. I would—I would...."

"What, Reuben?"

"I would study, and—serve, if I may, whether formally bound or not. I think that is what I was trying to say. It won't fade, Mr. Welland. I was never so certain of any other thing.... I ought to have spoken of it to Uncle John, but rather feared to because he hath had so much to distress him lately, the death of Mr. Dyckman, the loss of the Iris."

"The Iris? I heard about Mr. Dyckman of course, everyone has."

"A ship, that should have brought him a great return, taken by pirates off Virginia. Ben is worried about his affairs, knowing more of them than I do. That's one reason why he hath so set his heart on sailing and earning his own way."

"So?"

"Yes. Mr. Welland, you and Uncle John—you are both very kind. I will not disappoint you. I can work."

"Not exactly kindness. On my part at least, let us call it—mm-yas—recognition, and no more of it for the present, because—well, because the subject is complex and I must presently be off again, almost to Dorchester, damn the luck. There was a message for me at the ordinary. I've only time to snatch a bit of rest for me and Meg, and a quick meal, and a—I think, a change of shoes.... He never spoke of the Iris—well, he and I are not well acquainted. Certainly he hath a marvel in that ketch Artemis. He was good enough to take me aboard for a few minutes. I'm no sailor, but even I can see she's no common sort."

"Was Shawn there? A black-haired Irishman with a green coat?"

"Why, no, I noticed no such man, but there were many about."

"You would have noticed and remembered him."

"Mm? Mr. Kenny introduced me to two or three there at the wharf—Captain Jenks, and the mate, who was here, there and everywhere with scant time for landsmen."

"The mate? What was his name?"

"Why, Hanson, I think—don't you know him? We exchanged some little talk about New Haven, where he comes from, seeing I lived a year there once. Everyone was in a whirl of last-minute business. I felt in the way. Never knew there were so many different ropes to trip over."

Reuben set the shoes aside. "Last-minute business?"

"Why, yes." The doctor glanced down, puzzled. "What's the matter, Reuben? What did I say to disturb thee?"

"Did Uncle John say when Artemis was to sail?"

"Why, today. You didn't know?"

"No, I—pray tell me about it."

"Well—he said she ought to have sailed that day, yesterday, but they were waiting on some cargo from Gloucester, salt fish I believe, that hadn't come, and Captain Jenks all of a growl about it. They left it that they would wait till today, and if it still had not come she'd sail and—let me think—put in at Sherburne on Nantucket, and find what the islanders might offer to fill her hold. To my ignorant eye she already looked low in the water, but Captain Jenks was swearing she'd ride sweeter for another twenty ton, and a dirty shame—not his exact words—she should sail light."

"And then New York, from Sherburne?"

"Why, no, Reuben—Barbados, thy great-uncle said."

"Ah!... Thunder!—she may be gone before he's at the office. Ben hoped to sail, Mr. Welland. His heart was set on it. He was all one ache for it. He left for Boston only an hour ago, with no notion that Artemis was to sail today, only hoping to persuade Uncle John to let him sign on. I felt, sir, as if I was saying good-bye. He felt it too."

"I'm confused. Isn't he for Harvard in the autumn, with thee?"

"Yes, but he hoped to make a quick voyage to New York and return. It was his idea she should go there, and damn it, the proposal was most sensible. Uncle John might at least have considered it. Now he'll be heartbroken. Maybe I was saying good-bye to him, and not in the way I thought. He won't be the same when he comes home, not after this."

"Surely, Reuben, you're making too much of it."

"I know him, Mr. Welland. Certainly Uncle John meant it for the best, but it won't do. You can cross Ben, disappoint him, be harsh with him, but damnation, you can't deceive him, never mind if it may be for his own good—he won't bear it." And yet even as he spoke Reuben knew that his own strongest feeling was unwelcome, unreasonable relief: Ben would not sail, not yet.

"Mm-yas, I begin to see.... Reuben, why do you speak as if he were somehow your charge? He's the older. He must find his own way."

"That's true, sir. I even tried to tell him so this afternoon. To tell him that I had been—oh, too much my brother's keeper, and was sorry for it. I think he understood."

"Then let it be. If he's hurt and angry about this, it will pass. You've only to stand by and be a friend to him until it does. Don't make it more important than it is. I'm sure that after the first day or so, Ben will not."

"I hope so." Reuben hugged his knees, watching the fire. "I hope so, and I'll do as you say. And still I feel as if I had said good-bye to him."

"I suggest that much of living consists of saying good-bye. I suggest that a man says good-bye to his wife when they fall asleep in the same bed, the morrow's morn being a new region in the journey that can't be known till they meet there together. If they do. At certain times we are more aware of saying good-bye, that's all. As presently I must h'ist my creaky bones out of this comfort, change to those good shoes, and say good-bye to thee for a while. By the way, if study should come hard this evening, let it go. Thou dost look, as a matter of fact, very tired."

"Nay, I—maybe I am.... Dorchester, you said? Might I not go with you? You said a while ago that soon I could go with you on your rounds."

Reuben heard Mr. Welland catch his breath. "Not this one!" As often in bothered moments, Mr. Welland took snuff. "The message at the ordinary was—fi-choo-shoo!—garbled as usual, but having dissected out the fleck or two of not-so-golden truth from the rubbish, I have some reason to fear smallpox. That's in confidence, Doctor." He poked Reuben's shoulder, smiling a little but also stern. "Not a word to anyone. If it's true we'll all know it shortly, but if not there's no reason to set people's hearts a-squirming. Lord God, it comes, and comes again, and again, and we live like sheep on the side of Vesuvius, never knowing. Reuben, I sometimes think—and you'll have bad moments of thinking it too—that all we doctors do is no whit better than what the Inj'ans do, howling and screaming and beating drums around a sick man's hut to scare away the demons. Do you know that in all history no epidemic hath ever been overcome, nor even much lightened? It strikes, runs its course, and we stand helpless, making motions in the air. And yet one would think that if contagion could somehow be prevented—but where doth it breed? We don't know. What is contagion? We don't know. Why should a thing like the black plague have struck at England as it did some thirty years ago, and then after blazing and slaying for a time, simply fade away, for no reason men can see? Don't know, don't know. Sir Thomas Sydenham, a great venerator of Hippocrates by the way, was much concerned with epidemiology; I remain skeptical as to his conclusions. Galen, the great Galen to whom they say we must all bow down—Galen evades; I would have thee most cautious, Reuben, with regard to all the doctrines of Galen. If at Harvard they give you Galen as a final authority, be polite, but read in private the works of Sydenham—and even Paracelsus for that matter.... I'll tell thee an almost comical thing: I have lived fifty-three years, have read much and pondered, have spoke with a goodly number of learned and thoughtful men, and I have never, never satisfied myself as to a proper definition of good health."

"May it be, that state wherein flesh and spirit (the two indivisible, I think) are free to act as fully as the condition of a social being will allow?"

"Reuben...." The doctor was leaning forward in his chair, frowning intently, hands clasped before him. "Reuben, you did not give me that on the spur of the moment."

"Why, no, sir. I was fretting at that question the other night—only I came to it from the other side, wondering, what is disease? I wished a broader definition than any I found in the books, and so searched a little, but I don't know that it satisfies me altogether."

"I think—mm-yas—I think I will accept it until such time as you give me a better.... It takes no account of theology of course. But then, I cannot entertain the thought of a punishing God. Nor even a personal God perhaps. If personal, then in some way well beyond man's imagination. It often amazes me, that others can find such great comfort in the notion of a punishing God. Yet they do."

"It saves them from thought."

"Eh? How's that?"

"I think it saves them, sir, from the pains and trials of thought."

"Keep thy sharpness, Reuben. Thou hast already a summer heart and will not lose it. Keep that thorn in the tongue. Hide it almost always, but use it at need, never mind if others wince or even hate thee for it. Sir William Harvey was an angry man, too much perhaps, yet without the thorn in his tongue I dare say no one would ever have heeded him. I have none myself." Mr. Welland bent down, short of breath, to fumble at his shoes. "In anger I am—mm-yas—most ineffectual, a poor thing. I flush and mumble, lose all command of my thoughts. Anger requires a coolness I do not possess." He groped for the shoes Reuben had cleaned, and slipped his feet into them, and sighed. "Ah, that's better—my most comfortable pair. Thou art both cool and warm." Mr. Welland's fingers fussed awkwardly at the shoelaces; Reuben would have helped him, but had been unreasonably shaken by the words and did not trust his face. "I suppose that is one reason why I love thee."

Reuben thought: He is speaking only as convention allows; I must not make it mean what it cannot. He said rather clumsily: "Mr. Welland, if I'm to be a doctor, some time I shall be obliged to attend smallpox cases, whether or not I have the disease and the immunity it brings."

"But not now!" said Mr. Welland sharply. "Well—they say it's worse for the young—and mine own observation—thou art still growing. I will not see—I will not allow—no, not now!" he said, and having laced the shoes after a fashion, he rose and went to the door. "I must go."

Still at the hearth, watching the fire because his vision needed a refuge, Reuben asked: "Sir, may I detain you for one question more?"

"Of course."

"Mr. Welland, I am fifteen. I have a man's body—came to the change two years ago, nor am I ignorant of its meaning. Why have I never desired women?"

The fire murmured in peace; Reuben held out his hand to it, watching the aureole of light around the fingers cleanly defined. Eventually Mr. Welland spoke. "Never ask that of anyone else. I am glad, I suppose, that you asked me. Never ask it of anyone else."

"I never could," said Reuben to the fire. "It would never occur to me."

"Especially not of a priest."

"I have no need for any sort of priest," said Reuben Cory.

"I know. I say that because a priest is commonly the most earnest in nourishing and supporting men's hate for whatever is unlike themselves. I have never understood why it should be so—Jesus, if I rightly remember, did not assert that there was only one path of virtue. Well—the desire of women may come to thee at a later time."

"It came to Ben before he was fourteen."

"And in France, I believe, they still burn at the stake the ones who—never mind—my wits are wandering. Thou may'st have wondered too, why I live so like a monk? Why I have never married?"

"Mr. Welland, I don't think I've ever wondered much, about your life, because—oh, because you're as you are, because I don't seem to have any wish that you should be in any way different."

"What art thou saying now?"

"Is that strange?" Reuben was able then to rise and go to him, seeing his crinkled hands hanging motionless, his face that most would have found supremely ugly, lowered, eyes downcast, hidden. "Is it strange?"

"To me, yes. Since no one ever said the like to me. Reuben, thou art still growing—many more changes—let them come to pass—heavens, what else can anyone do? But remember: whatever thou art, that is good. I have no fantastic heart's image of thee, Reuben. I love thy self, whatever it is and will become. Now let me only kiss thy forehead, once, and I must go."

The garden was empty but for the daffodils, and the violets by the fence, and, near the empty stone seat, a hyacinth that had opened blue eyes for the sacrament of May. In the house itself Ben imagined too much quiet.

His uneasiness had not lessened but grown. His hands had been shaking when he hitched Molly; now they wobbled again when it was necessary to lift the knocker, but they lifted it, and let it fall, and Ben winced at the outrageous clamor his ears made of it in the silent street. Foolish of course, a green boy's idiocy, to stand here shivering and hoping everyone had gone away. No sound of footsteps within. Ben made vague resolves to try the knocker once more and then hurry for the warehouse. He was not late, however; it was still short of four o'clock, so Uncle John would not have left. No sound of steps, but the door opened, and Clarissa at sight of him looked unmistakably astonished.

"May I have a word with Mistress Faith, or"—Ben gulped, and applied finishing touches to half a dozen plans in the time it took Clarissa to glance down in slight embarrassment at the soft slippers she was wearing, and up to his face again—"or with Captain Jenks, if he...."

"Why, I'm sorry, sir. They're all away. They left within the half-hour."

"All away?" Ben thought: This is—relief? Relief?

"Yes, sir. Madam Jenks and the girls might be returning within an hour or two—or, I think, you might find them at the docks. They all left in the coach."

"Oh.... The—docks?" I must stop this parrot-babbling.

"Yes, sir." That answer had been slow in coming; when it did her voice had subtly changed, softened. "The Captain is sailing today, Mr. Coree. Did you not know it?"

"The—Artemis—is sailing?"

Not relief. Something dull, heavy, unreal, as if friendly trustworthy Molly had swung her rump about and let him have her heels; presently, when he could scramble up from the ground, the pain would start. He felt prepared—maybe this was the pain beginning—quite prepared to be savagely angry with the little brown slave if he discovered that she was amused at his ignorance of the sailing. Let her laugh, just once, or merely smile, with that cool superior wisdom——

She did not. He had known all along that she would do nothing of the sort; had known also that he would not have been angry if she had, seeing it was no fault of hers that part of the world had fallen down.

The look in her brown face—widening of brown eyes, slight parting of friendly lips—not pity, surely? Why should the slave pity him? Yet Ben's mother had worn that look at times—when Ru cut his finger trying to prove he could whittle with the knife in his left hand; when, on a certain evening, Father had spoken of the French butchery at Schenectady.... "Sir, you must have ridden hard—I see your horse is a-sweat. Will you not come in and rest a moment?"

"Artemis, sailing today.... I dare say I have no occasion now to—to go——"

"Sir, come inside. I'll fetch you a drop of brandy, isn't it? I think you rode too hard, and the day that warm it might be June." She touched his arm lightly, almost commandingly. Ben stepped into the cool entry, and she closed the door. "Come into the parlor. I won't be a moment. Do sit down, sir, and be at ease."

Ben sat down, his eyes avoiding the stern, badly stitched sampler on the wall, seeking instead the graceful model of a full-rigged ship on the mantel. He had been about to get up for a better look at that model, he recalled, when Charity and Sultan ambushed him. Clarissa spread open the drapes at the window, startling him; he had thought that in her noiseless slippers she had already left the room. He said clumsily: "I remember you did that when I was here before."

On her way out of the room she looked down at him—not smiling, he was sure, though the light shone strong behind her face and he could not see her very well. "Yes," she said thoughtfully, and was gone, and Ben turned to the model, finding in this better light the name painted on the side: HERA. Then this was she that went down off the Cape in a fog, seven years ago—not a man lost.

Uncle John's telling of the story had never given Ben much realizing sense of the smothering terror of fog at sea. He had it now, in the delicate presence of the Hera's image. Wet smoke pressing on the eyeballs of men seeking to live; no guide, no refuge, no gleam of direction anywhere, only merciless whiteness concealing fangs. A whiteness like snow, a silence like the silence of snow that muffles footsteps in a winter night.

No wind: fog flows in where the wind is not. Under the fog, no weakening of the rolling invisible currents that could drag man's creation into the snag teeth of a reef or against the crushing mass of a dead hulk. "Stove in her la'board side, filled in twenty minutes...."

Fog....

They would have prayed, the men of the Hera, and perhaps Captain Jenks with them if he had time for it. When they came safe ashore, not a man lost—but first the long blind groping, in one boat and one damned little dory, never knowing what might answer the next weary thrust of the oars—why, safe ashore they would have praised God for hearing them—the same God who strangely failed to hear a myriad others praying in extremity—and with some leftover gratitude to Peter Jenks as God's instrument. "Ben, hear me. I say God is far away, no whit concerned with man...."

"Sir, will you not look up?" There was a trace of most gentle laughter in that. Ben wondered when she had come in her silence, how long she had been standing there with the brandy glass on a little tray.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I was far off indeed."

"I know."

"Thank you—this is very kind.... You are from one of the French islands, are you not?"

"Guadeloupe."

A sip of the brandy warmed him a little. It was old, and smooth, the glass fantastically lovely—probably the best in the house, and probably English or continental, since nothing of the kind was made in the colonies; Uncle John's house had nothing to match it. "This must seem a cold foreign place to you."

"Oh, I have been more than eight years in Boston, sir. It used to be, I must think in French and translate before I spoke—I do not do that now. Perhaps I do not look as old as I am."

"I had thought you was near my age."

"I am twenty-seven, Mr. Coree. I know it to the very day, because Monsieur Lafourche—of Lyons, who later settled at Guadeloupe—used often to say that I was born but two days after his other—after his daughter. He wished me bred up as maid and companion to her. I had lessons with the same teachers when we were little girls, even the reading and writing. I cannot read English with any comfort. She, the little Mademoiselle, she died at sixteen of a consumption. I think my presence hurt him with reminders of her." Clarissa's voice was passionless, cool and distant; Ben noticed his hands were no longer shaking. "Monsieur Lafourche his fortune was much impaired in the war of—of your King William's time. Then in 'ninety-eight, between the wars, he sold his plantation at Guadeloupe and returned to France, and so was obliged to let me go, to a merchant of Boston, who later sold me here. Where," she said mildly and remotely, "I have received much kindness."

Anger moved in Ben, severe but directionless, formless, thwarted, without an object and seeking one. One could not be angry with Uncle John. He must have meant it for the best—somehow, somehow. "Where—do you know where Artemis is bound for?"

"Barbados, sir."

"I see.... Clarissa, I cannot think of you as a slave."

She moved into the light at the window, looking out; presently said with neutral calm: "But I am a slave."

The anger moved blindly, a flooded river seeking any low spot, any outlet at all. "Don't you know there's talk in these times that slavery itself is wrong? Why, Judge Samuel Sewall hath said it, written it too, and maybe not many will agree with him, but—but before God, I do," Ben said, wondering at the wiry clang of his own voice.

"One hears of it," she said gently, "but I think there will alway be slavery."

"Oh, why?"

"Perhaps because no one is ever wholly free."

"Oh, don't put me off with philosophy! I understand you, but—that was not—well, my brother, and my Uncle John too—I have heard my Uncle John say he would never own a slave, for that the thing itself is wrong. And later I talked of it with my brother, he was most passionate, he said it was vile and contemptible that any man should pretend to possess the life of another, or be privileged to command it and drive it where he may please. My brother is strangely wise—younger but a better scholar than I, much wiser. Somehow I can't ever do anything without first wondering, how would he do it, what would he think of it? I lean on him too much—well, I suppose it's because we went through much together, and I love him so, and we—I don't know—I'm confused."

"I am not so sure," she said, speaking into the light. "I think you have your own wisdom, Mr. Cory. Perhaps, if he be the quicker scholar, it is only that your brother can speak his thoughts more easily."

"No," said Ben, and sighed shortly. "No, he's truly wise. I have alway known it, am even pleased it should be so. He hath chosen a most difficult life work, medicine. I have alway known he would go where I cannot."

"You wished to sail with Artemis, did you not?"

"I did so."

"Mistress Faith spoke of it a few days ago, when I was dressing her hair, and charged me hold it in confidence because, she said, she was not sure you were ready to discuss it with the Captain."

It never occurred to Ben that there might be something strange in his lack of interest as to what else Faith Jenks had said about him. "Yes, I wished to sail, and it seems to me—I don't know why I never saw it before—it seems to me the best reason I could have for learning my great-uncle's trade and making myself of some account in it, would be that then I could aid my brother. It must be difficult to be a doctor. No one seems to grant them much respect. Mr. Welland of Roxbury is a very learned man, Reuben tells me, and yet I never heard of anyone deferring to him. He lives more or less in poverty."

"And still," said Clarissa, to the light—"and still, perhaps even wisdom is not everything."

"Nay, I'm sure it's not," Ben said, and wondered whether it was wisdom he was searching for in the brandy glass, where half of the beautiful amber sparkled as yet untouched. He saw her then, with a more naked vision, as she stood in the light and shadow slight as a child and wholly a woman, in her feminine grace no longer alien. He rose with no thought for the action and entered the same sunlight. "Clarissa, there is more here than I should drink. Will you not share it?"

Her eyes held him, not once lowering to look at the glass, her hand not moving to take or reject it. She was not shocked, he saw; not afraid of him, perhaps not afraid of the brandy glass. It might be that she was only considering what to do, like Reuben considering a position on the chessboard; but then he understood it was nothing like that. Nudged by his own heart, Ben said: "I assure you, no red comb will pop."

She stepped back, staring rather wildly. Her hand flew up to her mouth, but that was no defense, for mischief and delight were brimming over, uncontrollable. As Ben himself began to chuckle, she gave way to it completely, throwing back her head, pointing at him helplessly, the laugh going up and up in a golden rocket. "Oh, le peigne, le peigne, le bon Dieu me garde! Whoo!" Clarissa wailed, and slapped her thigh, and swayed toward him—sobering completely as Ben's arm went around her waist, but not drawing away, studying him a while with a dark and new sweet gravity, then at last taking the brandy glass, turning it about so that when she raised it the small mark left by his lips was covered by her own as she drained it. The glass dropped to the floor from her drooping hand; Ben felt she would not have cared if the lovely thing had broken, or perhaps she wished it to break, but it did not. "Une heure, fugitive et immortelle, une heure et alors——"

"I have no French." Ben's fingers lost themselves in her dark sweet-smelling hair. "My dear, what art thou saying?—tell me."

"Ah, little or nothing," Clarissa mumbled. She unfastened his shirt, her fingers swift and petulant, until she could rub her cheek over his bare skin; her mouth groped for his nipple and clung lightly a second with soft pressure of her teeth. "One hour, I think I said, one hour and then nothing more, because you will go away, because one hour given by chance is all we may have, mais ton sourire—but your smile I shall yet see, as I saw it first when you gave it to my little Charity there at the wharf, and I could look into you and know you, and my loins hurt me and my empty flesh, and my silly heart cried out I love you, I love you." Her hand sought for his wrist and clutched it hard. She spoke in a breathless tone like anger: "Come to my room!"

It was small, and bleak, and very clean, a room under the eaves with not even a bed but a pallet on the floor, a chair, a few hooks on the wall for her few garments. As he followed her half blindly, Ben had received a dim impression of passing, on the second floor, the open doorway of some luxurious room. It didn't matter. In her room she turned to him, suddenly grave but no less urgent. A small laugh came and passed like a breeze, impatient, as she helped him with his clothes and her own, her hands a bridge of warmth between them.

Slowness he felt then in the upward reaching of her mouth to find his lips. She was embracing him, a small column of urgent softness, and slipping down, kneeling, falling away—a slow and graceful falling until she lay on the pallet at his feet, no longer looking at him but knowing he would come to her.

There were the fears, shy, ridiculous but now amusingly so, not even shameful when with another faint gust of laughter Clarissa helped him again. Time thereafter was measured in roaring heartbeats, in the grotesque innocent throes where Ben at last discovered a strength that was his own, a sureness and a rightness. Some part of him could still observe at the very crests of the waves. He could see, perhaps pity, her rich mouth squared down as in suffering, her brown dear face suddenly drenched in tears and twisting from side to side, and yet know that nothing of this could be held back, nor softened, nor in any way denied, and that pain was of no importance whatever until the cup should be drained.

He was aware of most of the words she spoke—random and wild, fantastic or pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part of the climbing waves. "O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin, Benjamin. I want thy seed. À moi! Now! Now! Benjamin—thy bright mouth—ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu'À la fin de la terre."

Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: "Have I hurt thee?"

"No. Yes...." And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter: "No...."

He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, with wet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. She said: "I will not yet open my eyes." And she did not, even when—timidly this time and bewildered at his own impulse—Ben curved his hand over the golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it.

"Clarissa, forgive me."

She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling with amazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminative blankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him that what his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now or later could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, looking down at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At length she asked with much coolness: "What does that mean?"

"Clarissa, I did never intend"——Oh, close my mouth, anything I say makes it worse, and I go on spilling words—"We were swept away—I never intended—I've—sinned—betrayed——"

He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear her breathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he had known he would the high blaze of contempt. "Sin? Betrayal?..." Then—he had known this too and feared it more than anything else—contempt and anger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable and cruelly polite. The mask said gently: "Shall I help you with your clothes, Mr. Cory?"

He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, I didn't deserve that.

The mask softened a little; a brittle thing quivering, but because it was so greatly needed it would not break. She caught her breath and said: "Oh, I am sorry! Forgive me too—if you can." She caught up her clothes in a clumsy armful and ran barefoot out of the room.

She had forgotten her slippers. Ben knew—this was the worst knowledge of all—that he could not search for her in the empty house. If he found her somewhere, a hurt and shrinking brown slave, he would not be finding her at all. The slippers were very small, soft, gray, a little run over at the edges. Ben dressed clumsily. He took up one of the slippers and tucked it under his shirt, but then it seemed to him that he could not even do that. He put back the mute and harmless thing beside its companion, and left the house. As he unhitched Molly and set his foot in the stirrup it occurred to him, in a misery now grown dull and almost impersonal, that perhaps it takes more than a successful act of intercourse at seventeen, to make a man.

"I say overside is the only place. A devil's name, what do you want of a pisstail boy on such an errand?"

"Watch that tongue, Judah. Watch it, man, against the day the rations'll run short and I'll be a-mind to cut it off and ram it down your gullet for amusement and nourishment, now that's no lie."

"I said nothing, only spoke m' futtering mind."

"Good. You may do it again. You may speak up plain and tell me who's captain of this bloody sloop."

"You are, Mister Shawn. I'm only saying, a God-damn boy is no use here. Are you soft on the pup?"

"You could say one thing too much one day."

"Dead in hell or alive in hell with one eye, what's the difference? Comes to that, though, betwix' you and me, maybe I won't be the one that dies. Be you going below—sir?"

"I am in a moment. You too."

"Leaving only Joey and Manuel on deck, and Joey scared of a tiller he don't know yet, and the God-damn night blacker 'n a witch's box?"

"What's to be scared of, you fool?"

"I a'n't scared of nothing, never was. Piss on 'em all. What've I got left any man could take from me? You want Joey to pile up the tub on Noddle's Island it's no beshitten difference to me and you know it."

"Noddle's is it? You're daft. We're miles south of it, and clear of Dorchester Neck too, and nothing to watch but a sweet wide-open sea. Steady as she goes, Joey Mills! Why, Judah, man, I can feel and smell the sea and the land in the dark, the way they lie."

"I'll ever recall how Quelch give you a rope's end once for that same mad Irish brag. Nobody can feel land in the dark."

"Mother of God, what I put up with from you! Peace on it, Judah.... Keep your eye sharp for riding lights, Manuel—any lights. You won't see 'em, and yet you might. Close 'em just once, any more 'n you need to blink, and you'll hear old Shawn speak in a manner unkind. That's my boy, Manuel—steady as she goes! O the fair night, and we better off without a moon!... Well, Judah, well—say I brought the boy on impulse, though it's not that entirely. I never planned it, that I did not, but didn't I find him, the poor puzzled thing, hiding in the doorway where I was a-mind to hide me own self for a last look at Artemis going down the bay? And didn't I learn the way he'd set his own heart on going with her, and Kenny played him false too, with promises and then a chopping and a changing? God damn the old fart, I could puke to think of the way I all but licked the boots of him for a berth on her, and then to be shoved aside, shoved aside! We'll learn how far they'll be shoving old Shawn aside! Why, Ben's heart was set on her, so it was, he was that full of it you wouldn't know the thing he'd do, to be sailing on her—wisha, he shall!"

"If he was that hot for it why'd you bother to drug him?"

"This fishy tub will not have been his notion of going to sea."

"What are you laughing at now?"

"You wouldn't know. There's a sailor in that boy, Judah. There's an explorer in that boy."

"Ah! Still beating that dead horse."

"Steady as she goes, Judah! You know how much you can say to me—don't exceed! Ah, at that I might've persuaded him, seeing how sweet he come aboard of us here for a gossip with old Shawn, and was telling some of his boy's troubles but not all, not all, and believing everything old Shawn was a-mind to tell him over the little drinks, and the fish stink, why, he wasn't minding it, and the lantern light winking on the pretty face of him——"

"Shit, you're drunk."

"Drunk on sea water, Judah, you with your leather heart, you wouldn't know. He might'a' come along of his own will, now that's no lie. He was halfway so minded. He did believe I'd been given command, for a quick fishing trip to the Banks and so home—I think he did. But there'd have been much to explain later, and the devil with all explaining, the drop of opium didn't go amiss and will do him no hurt.... Judah, you fool, don't you know he saw you there at the Lion—and you that clumsy, and giving him your dead-window look, the way you might as well have written a letter to their Select Watch, that you might."

"What if he did? The others is bought and paid for."

"You'll run me no such errand again, Judah—nor wouldn't've then, had not my voice told me there was need. Mother of God, to think I may have misheard, and a man died for nothing! But it can't be so."

"Voice?"

"You wouldn't know. How many times did you strike?"

"I don't know."

"I do. Thirteen. And he didn't die till morning. He lived to speak."

"He's dead enough now, and never spoke of me. He never saw me nor Tom. Tom got the rag on his eyes and I came at him from behind. Thirteen, was it?"

"It was. Judah, I think you've never been as close to your Maker as you be this moment. You bungled that thing. He suffered, and no need, and now it seems there was no profit in the thing at all."

"Easy, Shawn! We'll take Artemis the easier and him not there."

"True enough. All the same I'm trying—while you're here so near the rail and a weak puky thing too—I'm trying to recall if you had any part in persuading me to it."

"You're mad, Shawn. You know I never...."

"I think you hadn't. God help you if ever I'm receiving different instruction!... Come below, Judah. I'll show you something. I'll discover if there's any juice in that leather heart at all. Mind the hatch, you clumsy son of a bitch! And go in front—I'm not so green you'll ever find yourself behind me with a rag over me eyes.... Hath he been quiet, Dummy? Shake your head for ay or no. Dummy's a good man, Dummy is. Mind if I'm touching your hump for luck, Dummy? And that headshake is ay?—good enough. Look here, Judas——"

"Judah."

"Touchy, man? Look here, and look well. Nay, drink first, there's something left here, and don't cut your stupid eye at me! I'm drinking first from the same bottle, am I not? I say, drink it!... Now look here: this is the mortal image and presentment of a man, Judah. O the quiet sleep! Look on this chin, rounded like a woman's and firm with all the fair power of a god! But you can't see, you haven't the eye to see or the mind to know. Look on this hand, how firm already, and will it not be all the nobler when its wondrous jointure is acquainted with the rope, and the leap of a tiller and the burning of salt and wind? This is a man. This is the man who'll go with me, and be my friend, and stand by me in the new world when the rest of you are stinking carrion. And yet it hurts me a little, that I should be taking him away from his brother who loved him.... Go back on deck, Judah. Your one eye sees nothing. Go back on deck. Well, lively, man! I'm following.... Come for'd. We must have a feather under the bow."

"You're drunk and raving. I've no mind to go for'd unless you make it an order, Shawn, and take care how you do it."

"Then bide here aft, seeing I care nothing what you think or do, and your one eye blinder than the one that's gone.... Any lights, Manuel?"

"No, sir."

"That's well enough. She'll be far ahead. Belike we sha'n't see her till a certain day when we're standing on and off outside Sherburne. We'll see her then, Manuel, boy, but she won't see us until the time I choose. And Tom Ball and French Jack aboard her, they'll know the time I choose, they'll see us come out of the north long before the others do, I don't care who's aloft. Good men, those, Manuel. Can you hear the water, Manuel? What does it say, Manuel?"

"I don't know, Mr. Shawn."

"But I know. It saith, there be many islands."