No More Learning

"We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when
you were beaten back by the foe,

"The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs,
but we were below,

"We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were
idle for we still swung to and fro.

"Will you never let us go?

"The salt made the oar handles like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the
bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips
were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row.

"Will you never let us go?

"But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water
runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us
you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the
winds in the belly of the sail. Aho! "Will you never let us go? "

"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie? "

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might
sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story
and give me some of the profits? "

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions.
"

"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about
from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the
rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry
her or do something. "

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married. "

"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort
of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began. "

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired. "

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no
imagination. "

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to
laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right. You're the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a
decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship--like a big boat. "

This was maddening.