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There was a sort of hydrant up the street a few hundred yards, I was told. I resolved that I would seek water at the earliest opportunity. Harree and Pompom had completed their third and final trip and returned from the kitchen, smacking their lips and wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands.
Judas himself stopped in a promenade of the room, eyed me a moment, hastened smoothly to my vicinity, and made a few oily remarks of a pleasant nature. Simultaneously by Monsieur Auguste Harree and Fritz I was advised to hide my money and hide it well.
And the remaining sous we squandered on a glass apiece of red acrid pinard, gravely and with great happiness pledging the hostess of the occasion and then each other. With the exception of ourselves hardly anyone patronized the canteen, noting which I felt somewhat conspicuous. When, however, Harree Pompom and John the Bathman came rushing up and demanded cigarettes my fears were dispelled.
Sure enough: John the Bathman, Harree and Pompom were leading this extraordinary procession. Fritz was right behind them, however, and pressing the leaders hard. I heard Monsieur Auguste crying in his child's voice: "If every-body goes slow-er we will ar-rive soon-er. You mustn't act like that!" Then suddenly the roar ceased. The melee integrated. We were marching in orderly ranks.
Count Bragard had declined the evening promenade in favour of The Enormous Room, but I perceived in the crowd the now familiar faces of the three Hollanders John, Harree and Pompom likewise of The Bear, Monsieur Auguste, and Fritz. In the course of the next hour I had become, if not personally, at least optically acquainted with nearly a dozen others.
Upon remarking that corvee d'eau must be excessively disagreeable, I was informed that it had its bright side, viz., that in going to and from the sewer one could easily exchange a furtive signal with the women who always took pains to be at their windows at that moment. Influenced perhaps by this, Harree and Pompom were in the habit of doing their friends' corvees for a consideration.
One has no business crossing a spirit, I thought; and produced the sum cheerfully which sum disappeared, the ghost arose slenderly and soundlessly, and I was left with emptiness beside me. Later I discovered that this ghost was called Pete. Pete was a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in Harree, John o' the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders.
A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in a ponderous and blasphemous fog of Gott-ver-dummers. The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound at the door.
I have frequently heard it chanted, in a low, sad tone, by aged Tahitiana: "A harree ta fow, A toro ta farraro, A now ta tararta." "The palm-tree shall grow, The coral shall spread, But man shall cease." WE will now return to the narrative. The day before the Julia sailed, Dr. Johnson paid his last call. He was not quite so bland as usual.
On my way to my bed a distance of perhaps thirty feet I was patted on the back by Harree, Pompom and Bathhouse John, congratulated by Monsieur Auguste, and saluted by Fritz. Arriving, I found myself the centre of a stupendous crowd. People who had previously had nothing to say to me, who had even sneered at my unwashed and unshaven exterior, now addressed me in terms of more than polite interest.
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