The Quitter (Norton)

E was as good a man, when it came to knowledge, as ever watched an engine; but drink and the devil had stripped from him the gold lace of a chief's uniform, drink and the devil had undone him in his hour of need, and the same twin pair of companions had insidiously assisted him to a bench in the park and a roll of newspapers for barrier from the wind. A long time ago men had forgotten that once he was Tom Walsh, chief on the fastest of transatlantic liners, and the story of the tragedy and disgrace of the tramp Barnegat had fastened upon him the unwelcome nickname of The Quitter.

Men in the old service had liked him. At first they had laughed at his inebrieties, then saddened, and finally witnessed his dismissal as being the fitting end of one who could not retrain his appetites. He had gone down the line with far greater rapidity than had been that of his ascent; for immutable Nature has decreed that it requires less effort to fall than to rise.

Drink had undone him the night when the Barnegat rammed the big outbound liner, and he, aroused from his stupor, had hastily scrambled out of his berth and found himself in a boat with fellow recalcitrants before his benumbed senses told him that he should have stood by his engines.

When he was fired by the board of inquiry and his license suspended, he drifted away from the waterfront and the unwelcome appellation.

But it was easier to escape the smell of the salt sea than his record of humiliation. He learned in course of time that to become no more than the engineer of an elevator in a big building required references, and these he was ashamed to give. He learned also that dread perversity which leads a man to a job and then, suddenly scourging him, whispers to the ears of an employer that the man in his employ is known as “one who quit.”

ND thus it was that, sitting on the park bench, hungry, disconsolate, and almost ready for the morgue as a place of rest, he faced his own delinquencies. The propinquity of the unfortunate brought him in contact with one of those whose courage remains undimmed after the eyes have tailed and the aged flesh quivers in the night wind, ind this un vanquished soul knew him.

“You,” said the aged derelict, performing one great action in his life, “have none other than yourself to blame. You snarl at Heaven, who yet are young, whose muscles yet are strong, and whose years are not outrun. Man, man! You are not worthy of the seat here on this bench! I see it all. You're called The Quitter because drink made you quit. Now you quit drink! Brace up! Tackle the game again! Get some other place and—don't quit! Men will forget the name. They'll remember that you stuck and— Ah. me! I am so old—so old!”

They were strange words to come from such a companion of the bench; but they gave Tom Walsh something to think about and he thought. He swore, by the void of the night above and the God he believed it still contained, to make men forget, to be again a man among them. The other derelict, who started him aright, passed on into the Nowhere but Tom Walsh, facing himself and daring to admit his own delinquencies, forty years of age and sullied by life, took a new tack.

And this is the tale of The Quitter. There may be those who will scoff at it; but there are others who, fighting their own failings, will know how desperate was his struggle and admire him for the fight. Perhaps the bravest thing he did was to go back to the waterfront, where he filled his lungs with the air from the waste and his mind with the thoughts of what that great outward sea held for the man who would not quit. No one knows what ignominy he suffered in the knowledge of whispers behind the back, nor of what struggles his tempering soul had with the fires of appetite that besieged him. Only this: that in the days of brave endeavor his shoulders squared back, his head poised itself more resolutely, and the real Tom Walsh was coming back into the hulk of a body it had abandoned when drink and the devil entered in.

NCE, in the days when tugs went out to sea, there was a dingy office on the Jersey shore where a man held forth who was a real man. They tell of him yet, down there on the waterfront where legends never dim, and say, respectfully and with bated breath, that no one ever got so far down in the scale that this old fellow couldn't find some palliating cause.

It must have been some invisible will, stretching from the outer world not given us to see, that directed The Quitter, desperate, hungry, and tortured by thirst, to the dingy door. He was sullen and grim. Everywhere he went men offered him anything but work, the offerings ranging from drink to insult, and the latter was the least hard to resist. He sat down for a moment to rest, holding his battered hat between his hands, the hands between his spread knees, and the iron gray of his bared head increased his semblance of misery.

Two men in seafaring dress came up the narrow street, stopped by the office with its cobwebbed windows, and talked.

“Casey's quit, and that's all there is to it. Gone over to the other towing company, and we can't get out till the old man gives us another engineer.”

Then followed a few strong remarks about Casey.

“He's a no-gooder, that's what he is, a no-gooder!” the other man said. “Goes off to another company the minute they offer him a dollar more. Leaves us in the lurch. Well, let's go in and break the glad news.”

Tom Walsh, formerly chief of the finest liner afloat, got to his feet and followed them in, earnestly, desperately intent on getting a job as engineer of a seagoing tug. The men who had preceded him had gone behind a grating where wooden bars held out all those save employees. Papers, files, and charts formed a background for a white headed man who was listening to their report. The Quitter trembled with anxiety. Something whispered to him that he should go out and get a drink to brace up his nerves, which, shattered by ten days' abstinence, would make his voice tremble when he spoke. That aroused in him the old dogged spirit of resistance and he blurted hoarsely but without tremor:

“I've come to get that berth!”.

E bellowed so loudly, with such fierce insistence, that he startled himself. The men behind the grating turned sharply to see a scowling, unshaven face thrust through the little opening above the desk. The head of the Harrott Towing Company stared at him inquiringly and then stood up.

“You are an engineer?”

“Yes.”

“Got a license? Any recommendations? Clean bill of health, eh?”

“License? Yes. Clean bill? No. I'm Tom Walsh.”

Harrott put his glasses on his nose and stared at him. Evidently his evil reputation was better known than his identity. Harrott leaned farther across, as if seeking some secret of the soul from behind the desperate eyes that met his.

“Oh, yes,” the engineer said belligerently, “I'm Tom Walsh, The Quitter. You've heard of me; but I'm through with the thing that made me quit. That's rum. I am, I tell you! All I want is a chance. I'll not quit if I get it!” And then, overcome, he stretched out trembling hands and ended. “For God's sake, mister—for God's sake give me a chance to show that I'll stick!”

Harrott moved restlessly on his feet, as if reluctant in his time of necessity to say no, and yet dreading to take a chance on this derelict but too well known. A voice broke in from behind, the Captain of the tug having observed the owner's hesitancy.

“That's right, you don't want him. He's no good. He's called The Quitter. Get me some man that will stick. This Walsh isn't to he tied to. He's lost every job he—”

“If I get a chance I'll be sticking after you've shown white!” came another bellow from the applicant. “You've not been put up against it like I was! You haven't any right to yawp. I'll tell you how it was if you'll give me half a—”

The white-haired man held up a restraining hand. Walsh checked his words. He had not forgotten obedience. The Captain of the tug sneered at his companion. A messenger boy from the inner office came noisily through. A clerk with a pen behind his ear and some manifolds in his hand walked in and halted beside the owner's desk, and a parrot in a tarnished cage beside the window seized the opportunity to air his English, while Harrott, old and kind, and Walsh, trying to get a new lease of life, stared at each other, one reading the other's necessities and the other begging for an opportunity to show that he was not entirely lost.

“Walsh,” the elder man said at last, “I'm going to give you the chance you want. As a rule, I don't believe men who have persistently gone down and out, when every opportunity was given them to pull up, ever amount to anything; but—well, I'm going to give you a chance.”

ALSH for the first time showed symptoms of breaking down. He shoved his fist through the window and took the white, thin hand of the master towboat man, gulped hard, glanced disdainfully at the Captain who had tried to hold him down, and then back till his eyes met those of Harrott, which had become unusually soft.

“It's all I want,” he said. “It's all I'm asking—and—and— Well, I'll not disappoint you, sir!”

He swung away with his back to the tiny counter to hide the working of his face, and Harrott, understanding men, took no offense at his lack of courtesy. He tactfully waited a moment and then stepped to a door in the partition.

“Come in, Walsh,” he said in a businesslike tone of voice, “come in. This is Captain Hurd, skipper of the Elsie B. You might as well sign on now.

He brushed a clerk aside and took out blank articles, filling them in with his own crabbed handwriting. Walsh stood with his hat in his hand, looking steadily at his feet and ignoring the other men, on whom a marked silence had fallen. The tug owner turned and beckoned to the engineer, and he came forward and signed the articles, but little different from those he had signed scores of times before. He looked up to again meet Harrott's eyes, and the latter's face softened and warmed.

“I know,” he said. “I know all about it, and—I know you. Go now! Go on! There's a tow waiting. Got a kit?”

Walsh shook his head. All he had in the world was the clothes he stood in. He knew they were all he needed, inasmuch as they were beyond being soiled. He followed Hurd out of the office, recognizing a certain antipathy in the swing of the Captain's shoulders as he led the way back to the wharf and the Elsie B, which squatted on the water as if waiting for their coming. A negro fireman was lounging in the engine room door, and he, at least, looked friendly and good humored. Walsh dropped down and stepped inside the engine room. The smell of the grease was like a stimulant. The splash of the water against the piles was like music. He threw his shoulders back and looked up at the steam and water gages, nodding approvingly at the negro.

“Sam, that's your new boss,” was all the introduction the Captain gave, chopping his words off as if grudging the necessary explanation. And then, directing his speech to Walsh but not meeting his eyes, he added, “How soon can we get out?”

“Now, sir,” was the quick answer, and before the Captain's shadow was lost from the doorway he reached over and caught the steam valve, waiting for the bells. They clanged melodiously, and he threw her open on forward speed. She swung sturdily out into the stream and away to get her tow, and he was so happy he could have cried for joy. Tom Walsh, former chief engineer of the finest boat afloat, was happy in a tugboat job that once he would have laughed at.

T took Tom Walsh a long time to learn the new lesson, that to fill a job capably, to be absolutely sober, and to hold his tongue between his teeth were not all that was necessary for him to rehabilitate himself, or to make men forget a black record. The only happiness he had was in doing his duty well and receiving the quiet encouragement of Harrott. The only friendship he had was that of the negro, who gave him a doglike fidelity and admiration. There had been a time when he had asserted that “No nigger stoker could work under me!” Now he discovered, when hungering for sympathy from his fellows, that a “nigger stoker's” heart might be just as loyal as that of the white man's, and, indeed, in his case, was proving less cruel.

Walsh, having no other home and wishing to economize, lived on the boat. Now that he had stopped drinking, he realized that saloons had been about the only places of entertainment he had known for years and that their temptation was hard to resist.

Once he ventured into one and sat down at a table, hungering to talk with some one and willing to pay for companionship. He brought a round of drinks for the men at the table, drinking and paying for ordinary water for himself. A sense of lathing came over him at their jibes. They could not understand a man who would buy water. As he sat there and thought of all the days he had passed in saloons, and watched his companions grow loquacious under the influence of alcohol, he wondered what attraction he could ever have found in such surroundings. He was still meditating when a rough voice called:

“Oh, there's Walsh, The Quitter! Ain't you fellers got no better company'n him?”

HUSH fell over the table and all of those who had accepted his hospitality scowled at him. One or two of them stood up. One said something insulting; but he was not looking at that man. He had jumped to his feet and was staring at the one who had recalled the evil pseudonym. It was one of the crew of the Elsie B, with whom he had worked but to whom he had never spoken.

“Quitter, am 1?” he yelled, leaping forward.

The man and his fellows had expected no resistance. It is regarded as a safe proposition, according to rule, to insult the man who has no spirit and a record of cowardice. Everything crashed and whirled. The man from the Elsie B and any others who interfered went down under the maddened smashes of Tom Walsh's fists as he struck right and left, breathing hardly and snarling between his back-drawn lips, until at last he stood in the center of a crowd that feared to molest him. Two or three tables had been overturned and broken glass littered the floor. Three men were being assisted to their feet, and the proprietor, fearing to meet the fighting animal in the center of the group and wishing to be rid of him quickly lest a police call jeopardize his license, gruffly implored him to get out of the place.

“I'll go,” Walsh declared, “unless some one else here wants to call me a quitter. Any of you want the job?” He glared from face to face; but no one volunteered. “Here, take this! It'll pay for damages,” he said, throwing a five-dollar bill at the proprietor and starting toward the door.

The crowd opened and made way for him in respectful silence. He opened the door and turned round. For what seemed a long time he glared at the men watching him and the man who had gone behind the bar. He lifted his hand above his head, and the silence became intense.

“I'll never again, so help me God,” he said, “walk into another saloon! I'm through with them, for good and all!”

He swung out into the night and slammed the door shut after him. He walked away into the darkness toward the Elsie B, leaving behind him a babel of excited conversation and several men who would never again dare use the term of contempt.

HAT was the last time Tom Walsh sought companionship. It was the last time that anyone ever ventured to call him a quitter, because news of the wharves travels faster than the tide. He was regarded as a dangerous man, one who on occasion might prove deadly.

His habits underwent another change. He found the companionship of books, and night after night poured [sic] over new treasures. He learned the joy of imparting knowledge to another, and patiently taught “the nigger” to read, to write, to calculate, and to take interest in his work. As the months wore away he took a curious interest in the experiment of teaching the black man engineering, and looked forward whimsically to the time when “the nigger” could stand an examination and get a license as marine engineer.

“Sam,” he would say, after hearing a lesson, “your head is thick; but it isn't so thick as it was. You are doing well. Now, day after to-morrow you've got to know all this,” and would then turn over with hard, black thumb the corner of a leaf. “Mind you, you've got to get all this down pat, or I'll kick you clear of the engine room!”

And Sam improved as he could have done under no less painstaking master, believing The Quitter the greatest engineer that ever lived.

EARLY two years passed in this strange solitude,—two years in which he was still subjected to the petty abuse of Hurd, which he bore silently, knowing that Hurd, after all, was and could be nothing greater than Captain of a tugboat. They rarely spoke to each other, and then on duty only, the one giving orders, the other obeying with alacrity. But Hurd had not forgotten that Walsh was once called The Quitter, and the engineer still remembered that Hurd had tried to keep him from getting one more chance. Time and again the crew had changed, with the exception of “the nigger”; but there was something so coldly aloof in the man in the engine room that none of those who worked aboard the Elsie B ever found him companionable. And this was the condition when the great test came.

A fight between a steel company and the railways had given the Harrott Towing Company some rich picking, and almost every tug and barge in service was busy taking strings of scows, laden with steel rails, from New York to Norfolk. The Elsie B had passed through the Narrows and out into the face of the Atlantic with a tow before the weather signals flew the storm sign, and was plowing along well out of sight of land when the gale increased and became threatening. From New York to Norfolk in fair weather, on an elegantly equipped passenger boat, is a safe, certain, and speedy trip: but for a single-screw tug, ancient and service worn, and towing a string of steel-laden barges, it is a long and trying journey.

As the storm increased and the tug smothered into the seas, her low freeboard burrowing rather than riding each wave, her Captain went from worry to desperation. Down in the engine room Walsh grimly stood by, and Sam was knocked backward and forward as he shoveled coal into the red maw of the furnace. The Elsie B was having the trial of her life, while, strung out behind, the barges wallowed and rolled.

On each barge two men anxiously stood watch, knowing that in such a tempest their lives depended upon the hawsers which appeared to lift and drop from sight as waves and hollows passed in succession. The rain drove in sheets and the whole horizon was close and dark. The wind lashed and tore; but could not beat down the seas that came swooping madly from the open Atlantic, as though hurrying to do damage on the shores and to engulf everything that floated in between.

The Elsie B could make no headway, and her screw, slipping and threshing at times, threatened to tear her apart. Now and then she would settle down, with squat stem, as if intent on fighting the Atlantic like a mad terrier, shaking her bow and meeting a series of waves with belligerent, dripping front. Again, time after time, as big rollers came, she would lift to the crest and almost clear her hawser, in a fierce struggle to hold her own. Her chances were scarcely less desperate than those of her tow.

In the forenoon hours she wallowed through a dark fight; but noon was barely lighter than the earliest hour of the morning watch. The storm was reaching its greatest strength, when she felt the buffet of a huge wave which threw her high and cleared her decks. The succeeding one found her still shivering and straining and in the engine room Tom Walsh hung to a stanchion. Black Sam had thrown himself face downward on the floor, bracing himself against the bunker port.

There was a smothering drop as the third wave struck, and tons of water smashed her length. She rose with difficulty, but determined not to be swamped and worsted in the fight. For an instant she seemed to leap forward. Sharply from the wheelhouse came the signals to stop the engine, and Walsh obeyed. Then, as if in confusion, came the signal to go ahead full speed. Again Walsh obeyed, wondering what could have happened. The engine room floor was lighter, and the Elsie no longer wallowed.

OR a full minute Tom Walsh frowned at the bells above his head, and then, seeing that the steam was under full head, called loudly for his stoker.

“Sam,” he yelled, “come here a minute!”

The stoker crowded through.

“There's something wrong up there,” Walsh said. “Watch her while I find out what it is.”

He climbed by main strength of arm to a porthole, waiting for a wave to lift the Elsie B high above the water, where he might get a fair view. Suddenly he dropped down with an oath of exasperation.

“Hurd's running away from the barges!” he said. “Running away because his line's parted! Running away to leave those poor cusses to drown without even trying to save them! Good God!”

For what seemed a long time he clung to the bulking of the engine room door, now battened tight, while Sam, blue and frightened, watched him and waited for his next speech.

“Sam,” he said at last, low and yet loudly enough to be heard above the turmoil of sea and whirling machinery, “you can run her, I know, if worst comes to worst. If I don't come back, you've got to keep steam up and handle her all by yourself; but keep steam up, understand? Keep up your steam! I'm going to the wheelhouse.” Before the negro could acquiesce he was gone.

E plunged up into the house where Hurd, white and frightened, was holding to one side of the wheel with another man to assist.

“You aren't going to run off without giving those fellows a chance, without trying to get a new line aboard, are you?” the engineer shouted, after seeing that the Elsie B was tearing away from the helpless barges which were yawing backward and forward in the seas, while one or two of them were already flying distress signals. “I say, you aren't going to—”

“Get below! I'm Captain here!” Hurd bellowed. “We can't help 'em. We'll be lucky to get off ourselves.”

But The Quitter showed no sign of obedience. Instead he came closer. “I won't stand it!” he yelled. “You'll give 'em a chance! Swing her over!”

The wheel did not turn, although the man assisting Hurd showed sympathy with the engineer. Hurd dropped back desperately and struck at the mutineer. It was over so quickly that the eye could scarcely note the swift return blow, and the Captain lay quivering in the corner of the wheelhouse, while Walsh had caught the port spokes with one black, firm hand. and with the other was ringing the engine signals for Sam to stand by. He nodded to the man across the wheel, and together they lifted the Elsie B over into the wallow of the sea.

She took the waves heavily, threatening to go to the bottom, and then, shuddering, faced back toward the surging barges. The man in the corner lay quite still; but neither of those at the wheel paid the slightest heed to his condition. With full speed the Elsie B had turned hack. Walsh's helper wondered when he was going to give a half-speed bell. They swung to leeward of the last barge in a wide curve before his hand reached for the signals. Instantly they were obeyed. He nodded triumphantly, as if asserting to the man opposite that a man, “nigger” though he was, would be on hand to answer. Already, careless of discipline, the tug's crew had crowded into the background. One of them had lifted the Captain to a sitting posture, from which, white and weak, he stared at the man who, by all rules of the three-mile limit, was a mutineer: but he dared not expostulate. The Quitter had become master!

“Here!” Walsh called, turning his head toward the wild eyed crew. “One of you fellows who can throw a line stand by to get a small one over to the head scow. The rest of you get out a new hawser and stand ready. Get a move on you! Don't loll there like a pack of idiots! You don't want to see those fellows out there go down, do you?”

The helper at the wheel wondered at his daring. He had never before taken a single-screw tug so close to a wallowing barge in such a storm. Now they slowed down to mere headway, bobbing up and down as each wave caught them.

HERE he heaves!” the engineer called, watching the attempt to get a line aboard the nearest derelict, where two men, desperate but lifted from despair by the tug's return, stood in waiting. And then— “Good Lord! He fell short!”

Again and again the attempt was made; but each time it failed.

“Here!” bawled the engineer to the man across from him, as he rang a bell to the engine room. “We've got to pull out, come around, and try again. When we get abreast I'll leave you with the wheel, and you've got to mind it! See? You've got to do it alone! I'll get that line aboard or sink her!”

The man nodded and took a firmer hold. The Elsie B swung out, caught the waves in the trough, and had another right to keep from foundering, and then, answering obediently, wore round into fresh position. Down in the stokehole Sam had taken time to fill his furnaces, and, set faced, was again standing by his levers and valves. In the corner of the wheelhouse Hurd, weak and whipped, sat idly, afraid to speak or interfere. He might as well have been dead for all the attention that was paid him.

Walsh leaped out to the swinging how of the tug, heedless of the wash of waves that slapped across the Elsie when she could not ride them. He beckoned up to the wheelhouse, demanding that they creep in closer and yet closer. The man at the wheel was keeping his nerve, although fearing each moment that they would go too far. The big engineer, with the light line coiled in his hand, stood poised for the throw. For what seemed a long time he waited, and then, whirling it above his head, sent it writhing out like a long, slender snake toward the eagerly clutching men on the barge. It fell short!

He pulled it in with frantic rapidity, beckoning once more to the wheelhouse, and the pilot, recognizing his daring insistence, threw the Elsie B over until she threatened to collide and smash.

Again the line looped out. There were shouts of exultation from the barges and the crew. It had been caught! Walsh beckoned madly to the wheelhouse, the bells jangled for a slow reverse, and the men struggled to gain something to hold to when the next waves came. The Elsie burrowed deeply, and when she rose men jumped to the new hawser which had been dragged out and coiled. They bent the lighter line to the end and watched the desperate efforts of the two men on the barge to draw it aboard, wondering whether their strength would suffice. Slowly it crept on over the short distance. The Elsie was drifting dangerously close. Again Walsh beckoned, and she started slowly out and halted. The new line was fast, and once more there was a cheer! The rain had stopped, and the barges were to have another chance.

ALSH hurried hack to the wheelhouse and yelled to the pilot, “Good for you! You're all right! Head her out!” and took his place.

A man poked his head into the little inclosure. “Here!” Walsh ordered. “Take the wheel with this other man till I look at Sam!” and ducked downward out of sight.

He came back just as Hurd was trying to assume command. “You keep away from these men!” he yelled into the Captain's ear. “I'm taking the responsibility, you—you quitter!”

And Hurd meekly subsided.

For twelve hours they fought her through the seas, watching the line behind, nursing the wheel, and fighting the fight that seemed hopeless. For twelve hours the men of the Elsie B took turns at stoking for the black man who stood by his engines below. And then came the victory. Slowly, storm beaten and exhausted, the tug and her tow crept into the quiet waters of the harbor and came to a stop. A big launch tore out to them, and Harrott, worried and white, came aboard.

HE Captain was the first to meet him. “I want that man arrested!” he screamed, pointing at the engineer. “He mutinied! He knocked me down! He made the other men take his orders!”

The engineer gave a scornful shrug and then, as if disdaining to reply, turned hack to his engine room. He was not there when the crew, the black stoker included, sprang at the skipper and would have thrown him overboard had not the owner interfered. There was a turmoil of explanation, until Harrott demanded that they speak one at a time. He heard all they had to say, and then turned to the Captain.

“I think, Hurd,” he said slowly, “that the Harrott Toning Company can do without you. You can go ashore whenever you wish, and if you'll come to my hotel to-night I'll give you a check. That is all.”

He got aboard his launch and went away. In a few hours he returned with another man. whom he introduced as the new Captain, and, the storm having subsided, the Elsie B took on a string of empties and headed hack to New York.

OM WALSH expected no word of thanks. He had mutinied and been forgiven. He was rating Sam for stupidity in his lessons in engineering on an afternoon some two months later, when he was summoned by messenger to Harrott's office. He went in quietly and stood outside the wicket, when the little tug owner called him inside as on that first day he had entered service.

“Walsh,” he said, “you're fired!”

The engineer appeared to shrivel in his shoes. “I've tried, sir. I've tried to make good. I haven't quit. I—I've—”

Harrott was grinning. “I've known the steamship people a long, long time,” he said softly. “They know you and—well, read this.”

He shoved a hunch of correspondence into the engineer's grimy hand. Walsh tried to read the first letter; but the words danced and blurred before his eyes. He got through the first few lines only. They read, “Thomas Walsh was as good an engineer as we ever had. In view of what you have explained to us, although it is distinctly against the rules of the company, and in view of yours and our past relations, and his previous service, he may report to the company at once to become chief engineer of the Tuscania, where we hope he will—”

He could read no more. The papers trembled in his hands. He crushed them into a huge fist and stood up. “But—but I must look out for Sam!” he said. “You see, he has stood by me, and—well, he did as much as I did. Of course you think he's only a nigger; but—”

“Sam?” Harrott said, turning toward the parrot, which had broken in with a voluble flow of jumbled sentences. “Sam passed his examination yesterday. He's engineer of the Elsie B. Walsh, the Harrott Company is through with you! Do you understand? You're fired! And—well, come and see me sometimes, won't you?”

To confirm the discharge Harrott thrust a check into The Quitter's hands and shoved him through the door.