He persuaded a now-remorseful Lieutenant out into the street. Martha led Potter by the hand while he tried to explain his conduct. “Not intentional, my most darling one, not with malice aforethought, as the lawyers would say. It was merely a whim, a notion, a gesture of amity for an old friend. Thomas Snyder. That is his name and Snyder will vouch for the purity of my motives. He is an artilleryman now, he told me, and has gone partly deaf. All those loud bangs, you see? Whatever, I merely kept him company. We were at school together and together we mastered McGuffey’s readers, together we added and subtracted and divided, and together we got drunk, for which I apologize. It will not happen again until the next time. Oh God, do I really have to walk?”

“Yes,” Starbuck said, “you do.”

“I do dislike strong, noisy men,” Potter said, but stumbled obediently behind Starbuck up the hill toward Main Street. “The army is filled with strong, noisy men. The life must attract them. You didn’t, I suppose, bring anything to eat, my dearest chick?” he inquired of Martha.

“No, Matthew.”

“Or a mouthful to drink, perhaps?”

“No, Matthew!”

“Water, dearest love, mere water. A moment, Captain Ahab!” Potter called, then pulled away from his wife and staggered over the street to a horse trough that was already occupied by a shaggy cab horse. Potter stood beside the horse and plunged his face into the water, scooped it over his hair, and then drank greedily.

“I’m so ashamed,” Martha said to Starbuck.

“I like him,” Starbuck said, realizing as he spoke that it was true. “I do like him.”

Potter stood and belched. He apologized to the horse, patted its neck, and walked unsteadily back to his wife. “My father,” he said to Starbuck, “always maintains that self-knowledge is the harbinger of self-improvement, but I’m not entirely persuaded of that truth. Do I improve myself by knowing I am eternally thirsty, overeducated, and sadly fallible? I think not. Would you both excuse me for another trifling moment?” He walked to the nearest wall, unbuttoned his pants, and pissed noisily onto the brick. “Oh, dear God,” he said, raising his eyes, “in one end and out the other.”

“So ashamed,” Martha whispered.

“Did you say ashamed, sweet love of my benighted life?” Potter called loudly from the wall. “Ashamed? Do not the poets piss? Does not an anointed king empty his royal bladder? Did not George Washington micturate? Was our dear Lord spared the need to sprinkle?”

“Matthew!” Martha protested, shocked. “He was perfect!”

“And that, sweetest one, was a perfect piss.” He turned back to them, buttoning his trousers, then waved imperiously at Starbuck. “Onward, Captain Ahab! Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! Onward, dear souls!”

Sally, as she had promised, was waiting outside Mitchell and Tyler’s jewelry store on Main Street and with her, as Starbuck had hoped, was Belvedere Delaney. The lawyer was dressed in one of the expensive uniforms he bought from Shaffer’s, but no amount of tailoring could disguise Delaney’s unmilitary soul. He was a short, plump, kindly man whose talents were making money and taking amusement from other men’s weaknesses. Officially he was a captain in the legal office of the Confederate War Department, an appointment that seemed to require no duties except to take the pay and to wear a uniform when it was convenient. Today he sported a major’s stars. “You’ve been promoted?” Starbuck asked, gladly greeting his old friend.