Indian Tales | Page 3

this idea."
"It came by itself," Charlie's eyes opened a little.
"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have
read before somewhere."
"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on
Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. There's nothing
wrong about the hero, is there?"
"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero
went pirating. How did he live?"
"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you
about."
"What sort of ship?"
"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the
oar-holes and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then
there's a bench running down between the two lines of oars and an
overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men
work."
"How do you know that?"
"It's in the tale. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper
deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the
overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember
the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of
course--the hero."
"How is he chained?"
"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a
sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the

lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes
from the hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the
sunlight just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and
wobbling about as the ship moves?"
"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it."
"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars
on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower
ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember, it's quite dark
on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at
his oar on that deck he isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains
and stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces."
"Why?" I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the
tone of command in which it was flung out.
"To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to
drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck
oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up the
benches by all standing up together in their chains."
"You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading
about galleys and galley-slaves?"
"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But,
perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something."
He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I
wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with
a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the
story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death
in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt
against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate
establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you
know"; and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy
the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. I had
the consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of
purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.
When next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets
for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words
tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most
of all was he drunk with Longfellow.
"Isn't it splendid? Isn't it superb?" he cried, after hasty greetings.

"Listen to this--
"'Wouldst thou,'--so the helmsman answered, 'Know the secret of the
sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery.'"
By gum!
"'Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery,'"
he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and
forgetting me. "But I can understand it too," he said to himself. "I don't
know how to thank you for that fiver, And this; listen--
"'I remember the black wharves and the ships And the sea-tides tossing
free, And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and
mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea.'"
I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all