makes me sick. I hate it, I tell you. What the devil I'm going to do for
a living I can't see--but I can't write another story."

Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I
meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year
of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if
that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I
should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse
might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less
interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad;
worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one
in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which
might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed,
had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise
was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a
week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my
discouragement and my determination to quit.

He took his feet from the rail and hitched his chair about until he
faced me.

"So you're not going to write any more," he said.

"I'm not. I can't."

"What are you going to do; live on back royalties and clams?"

"I may have to live on the clams; my back royalties won't keep me very
long."