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Full text of "To Have And Have Not"

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CHAPTER   XVI
THERE were many people in the dark street outside
the iron gates that closed the entrance to the old
submarine base now transformed into a yacht basin,
The Cuban watchman had orders to let no one in,
and the crowd were pressing against the fence to
look through between the iron rods into the dark
enclosure lit, along the water, by the lights of the
yachts that lay moored at the finger piers. The
crowd was as quiet as only a Key West crowd
can be. The yachtsmen pushed and elbowed their
way through to the gate and by the watchman,
'Hey. You canna comein,' the watchman said.
'What the hell. We're off a yacht'
'Nobody supposacomein,' the watchman said,
'Get back.'
'Don't be stupid/ said one of the yachtsmen, and
pushed him aside to go up the road toward the dock.
Behind them was the crowd outside the gates,
where the little watchman stood uncomfortable and
anxious in his cap, his long moustache and his
dishevelled authority, wishing he had a key to lock
the big gate, and, as they strode heartily up the
sloping road they saw ahead, then passed, a group of
men waiting at the coast-guard pier* They paid no
attention to them but walked along the dock, past
the piers where the other yachts lay to pier number
five, and out on the pier to where the gang plank
reached, in the glare of a flood light, from rough
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