No More Learning

And yet more and more wives, on the north side of the square. Observe
the virtuous horror of the lions! "

"You may as well explain," said Torpenhow, and Dick lifted his head from
the paper.

"The sea reminded me of it," he said slowly. "I wish it hadn't. It
weighs some few thousand tons--unless you cut it out with a cold
chisel. "

"Don't be an idiot. You can't pose with us here," said the Nilghai.

"There's no pose in the matter at all. It's a fact. I was loafing from
Lima to Auckland in a big, old, condemned passenger-ship turned into
a cargo-boat and owned by a second-hand Italian firm. She was a crazy
basket. We were cut down to fifteen ton of coal a day, and we thought
ourselves lucky when we kicked seven knots an hour out of her. Then
we used to stop and let the bearings cool down, and wonder whether the
crack in the shaft was spreading. "

"Were you a steward or a stoker in those days?
"

"I was flush for the time being, so I was a passenger, or else I
should have been a steward, I think," said Dick, with perfect gravity,
returning to the procession of angry wives. "I was the only other
passenger from Lima, and the ship was half empty, and full of rats and
cockroaches and scorpions. "

"But what has this to do with the picture? "

"Wait a minute. She had been in the China passenger trade and her lower
decks had bunks for two thousand pigtails. Those were all taken down,
and she was empty up to her nose, and the lights came through the port
holes--most annoying lights to work in till you got used to them. I
hadn't anything to do for weeks. The ship's charts were in pieces and
our skipper daren't run south for fear of catching a storm. So he did
his best to knock all the Society Islands out of the water one by one,
and I went into the lower deck, and did my picture on the port side as
far forward in her as I could go. There was some brown paint and some
green paint that they used for the boats, and some black paint for
ironwork, and that was all I had. "

"The passengers must have thought you mad. "

"There was only one, and it was a woman; but it gave me the notion of my
picture. "

"What was she like? " said Torpenhow.

"She was a sort of Negroid-Jewess-Cuban; with morals to match. She
couldn't read or write, and she didn't want to, but she used to come
down and watch me paint, and the skipper didn't like it, because he was
paying her passage and had to be on the bridge occasionally.