“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 overseas, 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 about it.” “You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?” “When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it,