Indian Tales | Page 6

have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out
and go _z-zzp_ all along the line? Why only the other night.... But go
back please and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again."
"No, I'm tired. Let's talk. What happened the other night?"
"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was
drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor.
The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You
know where I always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first,
under a fine English fear of being laughed at,
"No. That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning to
beat.
"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck.
There were four of us at that oar, all chained. I remember watching the
water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then
we closed up on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over
our bulwarks, and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the
three other fellows on top of me, and the big oar jammed across our
backs."
"Well?" Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall
behind my chair.
"I don't know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my
back, and I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side--tied to their oars,
you know--began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle,
and we spun round like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was,
that there was a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. I
could just lift up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We
wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn
a little bit because the galley on our right had hooked herself on to us

and stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left
oars began to break as the other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck
her nose into them. Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck
planking, butt first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and
came down again close to my head."
"How was that managed?"
"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own
oar-holes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below.
Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways,
and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes,
and threw things on to our upper deck--arrows, and hot pitch or
something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side,
and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the
water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over
and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it
hit my back, and I woke."
"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it
look like?" I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had
once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the
water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.
"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay
there for years," said Charlie.
Exactly! The other man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down
along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break." He had
paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of
knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him
and take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk on
twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a
London omnibus, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in
his lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died
scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my
knowledge, the doors were shut.
"And then?" I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.
"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit
astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many fights,
because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad of an
overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a chance.

He always said that we'd all be set free after a