The boys had a canny ear for the sounds of “good” ships. They knew them by the note of the horns.

They might be bunging out a barrel of wine, or picking up peanuts, or lying on the breakwater when one of the good ships (ships whose crews were friendly and gave the beach boys food) signaled its coming in. One would shout, tossing his cap into the air, “Oh, boy! That theah’s a regular broad coming in!” And it would surely be one of their ships.

Sometimes it would be a ship that one of them saw last in Pernambuco, or the ship that another had allowed to leave him in Casablanca. Three months, six months, a year, two years since any of the crew had met this beach boy. Indescribably happy surprise reunions, and stories reminiscent of how they got messed up with wine, girls, and police and missed their ships.

Ginger’s little story was brought out by one of these meetings. And for a while it made him “Lights-out” Ginger and the butt of the boys until another incident superseded it. Ginger had often mentioned that he had lost quite a bit of money in Marseilles in one night, but nobody knew just how. Then he met the pal who had been with him on the boat he had left and it all came out. In a bistro by the breakwater, over a table loaded with red wine, the story was told of Ginger’s going into one of the little houses of amusement in the Ditch. He was boozy and very happy, singing and swaying. He sang, “Money is no object. I’ll pay for anything in the place.” And he paid. He did it with great gusto, was really amusing, and all the girls and touts and the other customers were delighted.

There was a little mangy-faced white there who could make himself intelligible in English. And he said to Ginger, “The whole house is yours.”

“I know it,” Ginger grinned back, “and I’ll show it. I’ll give this here money to the boss ef she puts the lights out for five minutes.” And he waved a thousand-franc note. The patronne’s eyes popped fire.

“Why, you big stiff,” said the boy who told the story and who had been with Ginger, “that’s a whole lot a money and tha’s all youse got.”

“Don’t I know what Ise doing?” cried Ginger. “Ise one commanding nigger who’ll always pay for a show.”

“You can have you’ show, but Ise sure gwine away from here, leaving you.” And he left.

Ginger paid for his five-minute show and got all of it. Nor did he rejoin his pal, but remained on the beach to become a bum and a philosopher. Bantered as a scholar by the boys, Ginger always had a special opinion, a little ponderous, to give on topics arising among them. And whenever they were up against any trouble, he always advised taking the line of least resistance.

Ginger laughed with the rest when his story was told, and said: “There ain’t a jack man of us that ain’t got a history to him as good as any that evah was printed. And Ise one that ain’t got no case against life.”

Ginger’s former pal was now again in Marseilles, for the third time since Ginger had fallen for the beach. And the beach boys were invited to his ship to lunch. The galley of that ship was Negro and it was one of the best of “good” ships.

Banjo went along with Malty and company. He was not a regular panhandler like the other boys. He could not make a happy business of it like them. Because sometimes they were savagely turned down and insulted and he was not the type to stand that. He would have gone to work on the docks, as he had intended at first when he went broke, if his personality and his banjo had not fixed him in a situation more favorable than that of his mates. There was always a pillow for his head at Latnah’s, and when he played in any of the bistros of the quarter and she was there, she always took up a collection. Indeed, she collected every time Banjo finished a set of tunes. That was the way the white itinerants did it, she said. They never played for fun as Banjo was prone to do. They played in a hard, unsmiling, funereal way and only for sous. Which was doubtless why their playing in general was so execrable. When Banjo turned himself loose and wild playing, he never remembered sous. Perhaps he could afford to forget, however, with Latnah looking out for him and always ready with a ten-franc note whenever his palm was itching for small change.

The ship of Ginger’s pal had such a beach-known reputation for handing out the eats that, besides Malty and company, other men of the beach, white and colored, had assembled down by it to feed. Some dozen of them.

When the officers and men had finished eating, Ginger’s old friend brought out what was left to the hungry group waiting on the deck. Good food and plenty of it in two pans. Thick, long slices of boiled beef, immense whole boiled potatoes, pork and beans, and lettuce.

All the men rushed the food like swine, each roughly elbowing and snapping at the other to get his hand in first. While they were stuffing themselves, smacking, grunting, and blowing with the disgusting noises of brutes, the food all over their faces, a mess boy brought out a large broad pan half filled with sweet porridge and set it down on the deck. Immediately the porridge was stormed. A huge blond Nordic, who looked like a polar bear that had been rolling in mud, was tripped up by an Armenian and fell sprawling, his lousy white head flopping in the pan of porridge. The blond picked himself up and, burying his greasy-black hand in the porridge, he brought up a palmful and dashed it in the face of the Armenian. That started a free fight in which the pan of porridge was kicked over, whole boiled potatoes went flying across the deck, and Bugsy seized the moment to slap in the face with a slice of beef a boy from Benin whom he hated.

“Goodoh Bugsy!” cried Malty. “Tha’s sho some moh feeding his face.”

Banjo was standing a little way off, watching the melee in anger and contempt. A lanky, prematurely-wrinkle-faced officer passed by with a sneering glance at the beach fellows and went to the galley. The cook, a well-fleshed broad-chested brown Negro, came out on the deck.

“You fellahs am sure a bum lot,” he said. “The victuals I done give you is too good foh you-all. The garbage even is too good. You ain’t no good foh nothing at all.”

But the boys were again eating, picking up potatoes and scraps of meat from the deck and scooping up what was left of the porridge.

Banjo had started for the gangway, and Bugsy called to him, “Hi, nigger, ain’t you gwine put away some a this heah stuff under you’ shirt?”

“The mess you jest fight and trample ovah?” retorted Banjo. “You c’n stuff you’ guts tell youse all winded, but my belly kain’t accommodate none a that theah stuff, for that is too hard feeding for mine.”

Having finished eating, the men came off the deck, all friendly vagabonds again. Squabbling and scuffling came natural to them, like eating and drinking, dancing and bawdying, and did not have any bad effect upon the general spirit of their comradeship.

Malty’s group picked up Banjo on the dock and separated from the others. Their next objective was to find some conveniently situated barrel of wine that they could bung out and guzzle without trouble.

“It’s all the same in the life of the beach,” Malty said to Banjo. “Once you get used to it, you kain’t feel you’self too good for anything!”

“Theah’s some things that this heah boy won’t evah get used to,” said Banjo. “I heah that officer call you all ‘a damned lot a disgusting niggers,’ and I don’t want no gitting used to that. You fellahs know what the white man think about niggers and you-all ought to do better than you done when he ’low you on his ship to eat that dawggone grub. I take life easy like you-all, but I ain’t nevah gwine to lay mahself wide open to any insulting cracker of a white man. For I’ll let a white man mobilize mah black moon for a whupping, ef he can, foh calling me a nigger.”

“Nix on the insults when a man is on the beach,” said Malty. “Gimme a bellyful a good grub and some wine to wash it down is all I ask for.”

“You ain’t got no self-respecting in you, then,” said Banjo. “Youse just a bum and no moh. I ain’t a big-headed nigger, but a white man has got to respect me, for when I address myself to him the vibration of brain magic that I turn loose on him is like an electric shock on the spring of his cranium.”

“Attaboy!” applauded Ginger, who loved big words with a philosophical flavor. “You done deliver a declaration of principle, but a declaration of principle is a dependant usynimous with the decision of the destiny of the individual in the general.”

“ ‘Gawd is the first principle,’ I done heard that said,” declared Malty.

Bugsy grinned, saying, “And Gawd is in Boody Lane.”

“Youse a nut!” said Malty. “Don’t be calling up Gawd’s name as if he was a nigger.”

“I seen him there, I tell you,” laughed Bugsy, “the day of the big church fête. I seen that there blond broad burning her candle before his image.”

“It was nothing,” said Ginger, “but the eternal visible of imagination.”

No barrel was found in a position favorable for a raid, and so the boys filled their pockets with peanuts and walked across the suspension bridge toward the breakwater. Banjo was in a discontented mood and did not join in the jests. At the end of the breakwater a small boat was letting off passengers. Banjo went up to it and said, “Bonjour” to the patron, who greeted him with a smile.

Banjo stepped into the boat and, waving his hand airily at his pals, said: “Goodbye!” The patron started the motor and the boat went sheering off against the breakwater toward the direction of the Vieux Port.

The boys gazed after him pop-eyed and gaping. What a fellow Banjo was to put himself over! None of them knew that when Banjo’s pockets were bulging with real money that very boat had taken him and his girl on two excursions, one to the Château d’If and another to the Canal du Rove at l’Estaque. The boat was just then returning from a trip to the canal, and had stopped to let off passengers who wanted to see the breakwater. Banjo had merely struck, accidentally, a pretty thing again, but it seemed very wonderful to his pals, as if a special pilot had appeared for him and he had walked away from them into a boat that was conveying him to some perfect paradise.