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A Rose for Emily and Other Stories
at the low screen — including which the whole vessel did not sit much more than a yard above water level — with its single empty forward-staring eye, and he thought quietly: “It’s steel. It’s made of steel.” And his face was quite sober, quite thoughtful, and he drew his trench coat about him and buttoned it, as though he were getting cold.

He heard steps behind him and turned. But it was only an orderly from the aerodrome, accompanied by the marine with the rifle. The orderly was carrying a largish bundle wrapped in paper.
“From Lieutenant McGinnis to the captain,” the orderly said.

Bogard took the bundle. The orderly and the marine retreated. He opened the bundle. It contained some objects and a scrawled note. The objects were a new yellow silk sofa cushion and a Japanese parasol, obviously borrowed, and a comb and a roll of toilet paper. The note said:
Couldn’t find a camera anywhere and Collier wouldn’t let me have his mandolin. But maybe Ronnie can play on the comb.

MAC.

Bogard looked at the objects. But his face was still quite thoughtful, quite grave. He rewrapped the things and carried the bundle on up the wharf and dropped it quietly into the water.
As he returned toward the invisible boat he saw two men approaching.

He recognized the boy at once — tall, slender, already talking, voluble, his head bent a little toward his shorter companion, who plodded along beside him, hands in pockets, smoking a pipe.

The boy still wore the pea-coat beneath a flapping oilskin, but in place of the rakish and casual cap he now wore an infantryman’s soiled Balaclava helmet, with, floating behind him as though upon the sound of his voice, a curtainlike piece of cloth almost as long as a burnous.
“Hullo, there!” he cried, still a hundred yards away.

But it was the second man that Bogard was watching, thinking to himself that he had never in his life seen a more curious figure. There was something stolid about the very shape of his hunched shoulders, his slightly down-looking face. He was a head shorter than the other.

His face was ruddy, too, but its mold was of a profound gravity that was almost dour. It was the face of a man of twenty who has been for a year trying, even while asleep, to look twenty-one.

He wore a high-necked sweater and dungaree slacks; above this a leather jacket; and above this a soiled naval officer’s warmer that reached almost to his heels and which had one shoulder strap missing and not one remaining button at all.

On his head was a plaid fore-and-aft deer stalker’s cap, tied on by a narrow scarf brought across and down, hiding his ears, and then wrapped once about his throat and knotted with a hangman’s noose beneath his left ear.

It was unbelievably soiled, and with his hands elbow-deep in his pockets and his hunched shoulders and his bent head, he looked like someone’s grandmother hung, say, for a witch. Clamped upside down between his teeth was a short brier pipe.

“Here he is!” the boy cried. “This is Ronnie. Captain Bogard.”

“How are you?” Bogard said. He extended his hand. The other said no word, but his hand came forth, limp. It was quite cold, but it was hard, calloused. But he said no word; he just glanced briefly at Bogard and then away. But in that instant Bogard caught something in the look, something strange — a flicker; a kind of covert and curious respect, something like a boy of fifteen looking at a circus trapezist.

But he said no word. He ducked on; Bogard watched him drop from sight over the wharf edge as though he had jumped feet first into the sea. He remarked now that the engines in the invisible boat were running.

“We might get aboard too,” the boy said. He started toward the boat, then he stopped. He touched Bogard’s arm. “Yonder!” he hissed. “See?” His voice was thin with excitement.
“What?” Bogard also whispered; automatically he looked backward and upward, after old habit. The other was gripping his arm and pointing across the harbor.

“There! Over there. The Ergenstrasse. They have shifted her again.” Across the harbor lay an ancient, rusting, swaybacked hulk. It was small and nondescript, and, remembering, Bogard saw that the foremast was a strange mess of cables and booms, resembling — allowing for a great deal of license or looseness of imagery — a basket mast. Beside him the boy was almost chortling. “Do you think that Ronnie noticed?” he hissed. “Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Bogard said.
“Oh, good gad! If he should glance up and call her before he notices, we’ll be even. Oh, good gad! But come along.” He went on; he was still chortling. “Careful,” he said. “Frightful ladder.”

He descended first, the two men in the boat rising and saluting. Ronnie had disappeared, save for his backside, which now filled a small hatch leading forward beneath the deck. Bogard descended gingerly.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Do you have to climb up and down this every day?”

“Frightful, isn’t it?” the other said, in his happy voice. “But you know yourself. Try to run a war with makeshifts, then wonder why it takes so long.” The narrow hull slid and surged, even with Bogard’s added weight. “Sits right on top, you see,” the boy said. “Would float on a lawn, in a heavy dew. Goes right over them like a bit of paper.”
“It does?” Bogard said.

“Oh, absolutely. That’s why, you see.” Bogard didn’t see, but he was too busy letting himself gingerly down to a sitting posture. There were no thwarts; no seats save a long, thick, cylindrical ridge which ran along the bottom of the boat from the driver’s seat to the stern. Ronnie had backed into sight. He now sat behind the wheel, bent over the instrument panel.

But when he glanced back over his shoulder he did not speak. His face was merely interrogatory. Across his face there was now a long smudge of grease. The boy’s face was empty, too, now.
“Right,” he said. He looked forward, where one of the seamen had gone. “Ready forward?” he said.

“Aye, sir,” the seaman said.
The other seaman was at the stern line. “Ready aft?”
“Aye, sir.”

“Cast off.” The boat sheered away, purring, a boiling of water under the stern. The boy looked down at Bogard. “Silly business. Do it shipshape, though. Can’t tell when silly fourstriper—” His face changed again, immediate, solicitous. “I say. Will you be warm? I never thought to fetch—”

“I’ll be all right,” Bogard said. But the other was already taking off his oilskin. “No, no,” Bogard said. “I won’t take it.”
“You’ll tell me if you get cold?”

“Yes. Sure.” He was looking down at the cylinder on which he sat. It was a half cylinder — that is, like the hotwater tank to some Gargantuan stove, sliced down the middle and bolted, open side down, to the floor plates. It was twenty feet long and more than two feet thick. Its top rose as high as the gunwales and between it and the hull on either side was just room enough for a man to place his feet to walk.

“That’s Muriel,” the boy said.
“Muriel?”
“Yes. The one before that was Agatha. After my aunt. The first one Ronnie and I had was Alice in Wonderland. Ronnie and I were the White Rabbit. Jolly, eh?”

“Oh, you and Ronnie have had three, have you?”
“Oh, yes,” the boy said. He leaned down. “He didn’t notice,” he whispered. His face was again bright, gleeful. “When we come back,” he said. “You watch.”

“Oh,” Bogard said. “The Ergenstrasse.” He looked astern, and then he thought: “Good Lord! We must be going — traveling.” He looked out now, broadside, and saw the harbor line fleeing past, and he thought to himself that the boat was well-nigh moving at the speed at which the Handley-Page flew, left the ground.

They were beginning to bound now, even in the sheltered water, from one wave crest to the next with a distinct shock. His hand still rested on the cylinder on which he sat. He looked down at it again, following it from where it seemed to emerge beneath Ronnie’s seat, to where it beveled into the stern. “It’s the air in her, I suppose,” he said.

“The what?” the boy said.
“The air. Stored up in her. That makes the boat ride high.”

“Oh, yes. I dare say. Very likely. I hadn’t thought about it.” He came forward, his burnous whipping in the wind, and sat down beside Bogard. Their heads were below the top of the screen.
Astern the harbor fled, diminishing, sinking into the sea.

The boat had begun to lift now, swooping forward and down, shocking almost stationary for a moment, then lifting and swooping again; a gout of spray came aboard over the bows like a flung shovelful of shot. “I wish you’d take this coat,” the boy said.

Bogard didn’t answer. He looked around at the bright face. “We’re outside, aren’t we?” he said quietly.
“Yes. . . . Do take it, won’t you?”

“Thanks, no. I’ll be all right. We won’t be long, anyway, I guess.”
“No. We’ll turn soon. It won’t be so bad then.”

“Yes. I’ll be all right when we turn.” Then they did turn. The motion became easier. That is, the boat didn’t bang head-on, shuddering, into the swells. They came up beneath now, and the boat fled with increased speed, with a long, sickening, yawing motion, first to one side and then the other. But it fled on, and Bogard looked astern with that same soberness with which he had first looked down into the boat. “We’re going

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at the low screen — including which the whole vessel did not sit much more than a yard above water level — with its single empty forward-staring eye, and he