Multiple characters in one slot of an ArrayList?

Question

I am writing a method that extracts words from a string and returns an ArrayList with the given extracted words. I am not allowed to use the method split.
I have managed to get the characters of the input string into an array list, but I can't seem to get multiple characters into one slot of the list. Can you put multiple characters into one slot of an array list?
Here is the code for my method.
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
public class PS6
  public static ArrayList<Object> extract_words(String string1)
   String s1 = string1;
   char space = ' ';
   int index = 0;
   ArrayList<Object> charArray = new ArrayList<Object>(s1.length());
   for (index = 0; index < s1.length(); index++)
     char current = s1.charAt(index);
     if(current != space)
       charArray.add(current);
   return charArray;
}If I leave it like this, when I write a test program to test this method, my output is:
java ExtractWordsTest
[N, o, w, i, s, t, h, e, t, i, m, e]
Not what I want. I want [Now, is, the, time]
I thought to fix this, I could modify part of the for loop as such
int position = 0;
     if(current != space)
       charArray.add(position, current);
    else
       position++;
     } thinking that this would add all characters to the same slot in the ArrayList until it found a space. If it found a space, it would advance the slot of the ArrayList and start adding characters to that slot until it found another space. It would do this until it reached the end of the string.
But with this code, the output of the test program is
java ExtractWordsTest
[e, m, i, t, e, h, t, s, i, w, o, N]
Am I going about this in the wrong way? Is it not possible to add multiple characters to one slot of an array list?

Answer 1

I've been trying to account for that. I figured that it wasn't giving me the last word because it never finds a final space, which is true. When in my test program, I make the test string "Now is the time " with that extra space, the out put is [Now, is, the, time].
The problem is I don't want to put in that extra space.
I've been trying to put in another else if statement, but I'm not trying things that are correct.
I've tried the above code with
else if (current == finalChar)
     { /*trying to get it to extract the last substring and add it to the array as the last element*/
       newString = s1.substring(s1.lastIndexOf(space), s1.length());
       stringArrayL.add(newString);
     }but even though the method compiles, it makes my test program go crazy and clearly does not work.
I've tried using || in various ways, specifically regarding the second else statement
else if (current == space || current = s1.charAt(s1.length()))
         stringArrayL.add(newString);
         newString = "";
       }but that, as well as other || parameters I have tried keeps spitting out
[Now, is, the]
The only way I've gotten it to give me all four is by putting that extra space in at the end of the test string, which I don't want to have to do.