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