stretcher dead, a stoker as drunk as though he were
dead being wheeled on a wheelbarrow to a ship by the man called a
"crimp," who sold this drunken body for an advance on its future pay.
Sam told me in detail of these things. There came a strike, and once in
the darkness of a cold November twilight I saw some dockers rush on a
"scab," I heard the dull sickening thumps as they beat him.

And one day Sam took me to the door of his father's saloon and pointed
out a man in there who had an admiring circle around him.

"He's going to jump from the Bridge on a bet," Sam whispered. I saw the
man go. For what seemed to me hours I watched the Great Bridge up there
in the sky, with its crawling processions of trolleys and wagons, its
whole moving armies of little black men. Suddenly one of these tiny
specks shot out and down, I saw it fall below the roofs, I felt Sam's
hand like ice in mine. And this was not good for a boy of ten.

But the sight that ended it all for me was not a man, but a woman. It
happened one chilly March afternoon when I fell from a dock into water
covered with grease and foam, came up spluttering and terrified, was
quickly hauled to the dock by a man and then hustled by Sam and the gang
to his home, to have my clothes dried and so not get caught by my
mother. Scolded by Sam's mother and given something fiery hot to drink,
stripped naked and wrapped in an old flannel nightgown and told to sit
by the stove in the kitchen--I was then left alone with Sam. And then
Sam with a curious light in his eyes took me to a door which he opened
just a crack. Through the crack he showed me a small back room full of
round iron tables. And at one of these a man, stoker or sailor I don't
know which, his face flushed red under dirt and hair, held in his lap a
big fat girl half dressed, giggling and queer, quite drunk. And then
while Sam whispered on and on about the shuttered rooms upstairs, I felt
a rush of such sickening fear and loathing that I wanted to scream--but
I turned too faint.

I remember awakening on the floor, Sam's mother furiously slapping Sam,
then dressing me quickly, gripping me tight by both my arms and saying,

"You tell a word of this to your pa and we'll come up and kill you!"

That night at home I did not sleep. I lay in my bed and shivered and
burned. My first long exciting adventure was over. Ended were all the
thrills, the wild fun. It was a spree I had had with the harbor, from
the time I was