The quarter of the old port exuded a nauseating odor of mass life congested, confused, moving round and round in a miserable suffocating circle. Yet everything there seemed to belong and fit naturally in place. Bistros and love shops and girls and touts and vagabonds and the troops of dogs and cats⁠—all seemed to contribute so essentially and colorfully to that vague thing called atmosphere. No other setting could be more appropriate for the men on the beach. It was as if all the derelicts of all the seas had drifted up here to sprawl out the days in the sun.

The men on the beach spent the day between the breakwater and the docks, and the night between the Bum Square and the Ditch. Most of the whites, especially the blond ones of northern countries, seemed to have gone down hopelessly under the strength of hard liquor, as if nothing mattered for them now but that. They were stinking-dirty, and lousy, without any apparent desire to clean themselves. With the black boys it was different. It was as if they were just taking a holiday. They were always in holiday spirit, and if they did not appear to be specially created for that circle, they did not spoil the picture, but rather brought to it a rich and careless tone that increased its interest. They drank wine to make them lively and not sodden, washed their bodies and their clothes on the breakwater, and sometimes spent a panhandled ten-franc note to buy a secondhand pair of pants.

Banjo had become a permanent lodger at Latnah’s. His wound was not serious, but it was painful and had given him a light fever. Latnah told him that when his wrist was well enough for him to play, she would go with him to perform in some of the bars of the quarter and take up a collection.

In the daytime Latnah went off by herself to her business, and sometimes the nature of it detained her overnight and she did not get back to her room. Banjo spent most of his time with Malty’s gang. He was not altogether one of them, but rather a kind of honorary member, having inspired respect by his sudden conquest of Latnah and by being an American.

An American seaman (white or black) on the beach is always treated with a subtle difference by his beach fellows. He has a higher face value than the rest. His passport is worth a good price and is eagerly sought for by passport fabricators. And he has the assurance that, when he gets tired of beaching, his consulate will help him back to the fabulous land of wealth and opportunity.

Banjo dreamed constantly of forming an orchestra, and the boys listened incredulously when he talked about it. He had many ideas of beginning. If he could get two others besides himself he could arrange with the proprietor of some café to let them play at his place. That might bring in enough extra trade to pay them something. Or he might make one of the love shops of the Ditch unique and famous with a black orchestra.

One day he became very expansive about his schemes under the influence of wine-drinking on the docks. This was the great sport of the boys. They would steal a march on the watchmen or police, bung out one of the big casks, and suck up the wine through rubber tubes until they were sweetly soft.

Besides Banjo there were Malty, Ginger, and Bugsy. After they had finished with the wine, they raided a huge heap of peanuts, filled up their pockets, and straggled across the suspension bridge to lie in the sun on the breakwater.

“I could sure make one a them dumps look like a real spohting-place,” said Banjo, “with a few of us niggers pifforming in theah. Lawdy! but the chances there is in a wide-open cat town like this! But everybody is so hoggish after the sous they ain’t got no imagination left to see big money in a big thing⁠—”

“It wasn’t a big thing that dat was put ovah on you, eh?” sniggered Bugsy.

“Big you’ crack,” retorted Banjo. “That theah wasn’t nothing at all. Ain’t nobody don’t put anything ovah on me that I didn’t want in a bad way to put ovah mahself. I like the looks of a chicken-house, and I ain’t nevah had no time foh the business end ovit. But when I see how these heah poah ole disabled hens am making a hash of a good thing with a gang a cheap no-’count p.i.’s, I just imagine what a high-yaller queen of a place could do ovah heah turned loose in this sweet clovah. Oh, boy, with a bunch a pinks and yallers and chocolates in between, what a show she could showem!”

“It’s a tall lot easier talking than doing,” said Bugsy. “Theyse some things jest right as they is and ain’t nevah was made foh making better or worser. Now supposing you was given a present of it, what would you make outa one a them joints in Boody Lane?”

Boody Lane was the beach boys’ name for the Rue de la Bouterie, the gut of the Ditch.

“Well, that’s a forthrightly question and downrightly hard to answer,” said Banjo. “For I wasn’t inclosing them in mah catalogory, becausen they ain’t real places, brother; them’s just stick-in-the-mud holes. Anyway, if one was gived to me I’d try everything doing excep’n’ lighting it afire.”

At this they all laughed. “Don’t light it afire” was the new catch phrase among the beach boys and they passed it on to every new seaman that was introduced to the Ditch. When the new man, curious, asked the meaning, they replied, laughing mysteriously, “Because it is six months.”

The phrase was the key to the story of an American brown boy who went on shore leave and would not keep company with any of his comrades. At the Vieux Port he was besieged by the black beach boys, but he refused to give them anything and told them that they ought to be ashamed to let down their race by scavengering on the beach. When he started to go up into the Ditch the boys warned him that it was dangerous to go alone. He went alone, replying that he did not want the advice or company of bums.

He went proud and straight into one of the stick-in-the-mud places of Boody Lane. And before he could get out, his pocketbook with his roll of dollars was missing. He accused the girl by signs. She replied by signs and insults that he had not brought the pocketbook there. She mentioned “police” and left the box. He thought she had gone to get the police to help him find his money. But he waited and waited, and when she did not return, realizing that he had been tricked, he struck a match and set the bed on fire. That not only brought him the police, but also the fire brigade and six months in prison, where he was now cooling himself.

Ginger said: “I ain’t no innovation sort of a fellah. When I make a new beach all I want is to make mah way and not make no changes. Just make mah way somehow while everything is going on without me studying them or them studying me.”

He was lying flat on his back on one of the huge stone blocks of the breakwater. The waves were lapping softly around it. He had no shirt on and, unfastening the pin at the collar of his old blue coat, he flung it back and exposed his brown belly to the sun. His trousers waist was pulled down below his navel. “Oh, Gawd, the sun is sweet!” he yawned and, pulling his cap over his eyes, went to sleep. The others also stretched themselves and slept.

Along the great length of the breakwater other careless vagabonds were basking on the blocks. The day was cooling off and the sun shed down a warm, shimmering glow where the light fell full on the water. Over by l’Estaque, where they were extending the port, a P.L.M. coal ship stood black upon the blue surface. The factories loomed on the long slope like a rusty-black mass of shapes strung together, and over them the bluish-gray hills were bathed in a fine, delicate mist, and further beyond an immense phalanx of gray rocks, the inexhaustible source of the cement industry, ran sharply down into the sea.

Sundown found the boys in the Place de la Joliette. In one of the cafés they found a seaman from Zanzibar among some Maltese, from whom they took him away.

“Wese just in time for you,” Malty declared. “What youse looking for is us. Fellahs who speak the same as you speak and not them as you kain’t trust who mix up the speech with a mess of Arabese. Them’s a sort of bastard Arabs, them Maltese, and none of us likes them, much less trusts them.”

The new man was very pleased to fall in with fellows as friendly as Banjo and Malty. He was on a coal boat from South Shields and had a few pounds on him. He was generous and stood drinks in several cafés. From the Place de la Joliette, they took the quiet way of the Boulevard de la Major to reach the Ditch. It was the best way for the beach boys. Some of them had not the proper papers to get by the police and tried to evade them always. By way of the main Rue de la République they were more likely to be stopped, questioned, searched, and taken to the police station. Sometimes they were told that their papers were not in order, but they were only locked up for a night and let out the next morning. Some of them complained of being beaten by the police. Ginger thought the police were getting more brutal and strict, quite different from what they were like when he first landed on the beach. Then they could bung out a cask of wine in any daring old way and drink without being bothered. Now it was different. It was not very long since two fellows from the group had got two months each for wine-stealing. Happily for them, Malty, Ginger, and Bugsy all had passable papers.

On the way to the Ditch they stopped in different bistros to empty in each a bottle of red wine. These fellows, who were used to rum in the West Indies, gin and corn liquor in the States, and whisky in England, took to the red wine of France like ducks to water. They never had that terribly vicious gin or whisky drunk. They seemed to have lost all desire for hard liquor. When they were drunk it was always a sweetly-soft good-natured wine drunk.

They had a big feed in one of the Chinese restaurants of the Rue Torte. The new man insisted on paying for it all. After dinner they went to a little café on the Quai du Port for coffee-and-rum. The newcomer took a mouth organ from his pocket and began playing. This stimulated Banjo, who said, “I guess mah hand c’n do its stuff again,” and so he went up to Latnah’s room and got his banjo.

They went playing from little bistro to bistro in the small streets between the fish market and the Bum Square. They were joined by others⁠—a couple of Senegalese and some British West Africans and soon the company was more than a dozen. They were picturesquely conspicuous as they loitered along, talking in a confused lingo of English, French, and native African. And in the cafés the bottles of beer and wine that they ordered and drank indiscriminately increased as their number increased. Customers were attracted by the music, and the girls, too, who were envious and used all their wiles to get away the newly arrived seaman from the beach boys.⁠ ⁠…

“Hot damn!” cried Banjo. “What a town this heah is to spread joy in!”

“And you sure did spread yours all at once,” retorted Bugsy. “Burn it up in one throw and finish, you did.”

“Muzzle you’ mouf, nigger,” replied Banjo. “The joy stuff a life ain’t nevah finished for this heah strutter. When I turn mahself loose for a big wild joyful jazz a life, you can bet you’ sweet life I ain’t gwine nevah regretting it. Ise got moh joy stuff in mah whistle than you’re got in you’ whole meager-dawg body.”

“And I wouldn’t want to know,” said Bugsy.

At midnight they were playing in one of the cafés of the Bum Square, when an oldish man came in wearing faded green trousers, a yellowy black-bordered jacket, with a wreath of flowers around his neck and began to dance. He manipulated a stick with such dexterity that it seemed as if his wrist was moving round like a wheel, and he jigged and hopped from side to side with amazing agility while Banjo and the seaman played.

When they stopped, the garlanded dancer said he would bet anybody a bottle of vin blanc supérieur that he could stand on his head on a table. A youngster in proletarian blue made a sign against his head and said of the old fellow, “Il est fada.” And the old man did indeed look a little mad in his strange costume and graying hair, and it seemed unlikely that his bones could support him in the feat that he proclaimed he could perform. But nobody took up the bet.

Somebody translated what was what to the new seaman, who said, carelessly, “May as well bet and have a little fun outa him.”

“Très bien,” said the old man. He made several attempts at getting headdown upon the table and failed funnily, like professional acrobats in their first trials on the stage, and the café resounded with peals of laughter and quickly filled up. Suddenly the old fellow cried: “Ça y est!” and spread his hands out, balancing himself straight up on his head on the table. In a moment he jumped down and, twisting his stick and executing some steps, went round with his hat and took up a collection before the crowd diminished. The beach boys threw in their share of sous and the seaman promptly paid for the bottle of white wine. The old man took it and left the café, followed by a woman.

Latnah, passing through the Bum Square and seeing Banjo playing, had entered the café just when the old man stopped dancing and asked who would take up his bet. The good collection he took up and the bottle of wine in addition awakened all her instincts of acquisitiveness and envious rivalry. She turned on Banjo.

“All that money man take and gone is you’ money. You play and he take money. You too proud to ask money and you no have nothing. You feel rich, maybe.”

“Leave me be, woman,” said Banjo.

“And you make friend pay wine for man. Man make nothing but bluff. You colored make the white fool you all time⁠—”

“I didn’t tell him to bet nothing. But even then, what is a little lousy bet? Gawd bless mah soul! The money I done bet in my life and all foh big stakes on them race tracks in Montreal. What do you-all know about life and big stakes?” Banjo waved his hand in a tipsy sweep as if he saw the old world of racetrack bettors before him.

“This no Montreal; this Marseilles,” replied Latnah, “and you very fool to play for nothing. You need money, you bitch-commer⁠—”

“Now quit you’ noise. Ise going with you, but I ain’t gwine let you ride me. Get me? No woman nevah ride me yet and you ain’t gwine to ride me, neither.”

He stood up, resting the banjo on a table.

“And it not me doing the riding, I’m sure,” said Latnah.

“Come on, fellahs; let’s get outa this. Let’s take our hump away from here,” said Banjo.