Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (163 page)

He
shivered
slightly
and
protested
that
he
could
remember
no more.

I
did
not
press
him
further,
but
to
satisfy
myself
that
he
lay
in
260
ignorance
of
the
workings
of
his
own
mind,
deliberately
introduced him
to
Mortimer
Collins's
"Transmigration,"
and
gave
him
a
sketch of
the
plot
before
he
opened
the
pages.

"What
rot
it
all
is!"
he
said,
frankly,
at
the
end
of
an
hour.
"I
don't understand
his
nonsense
about
the
Red
Planet
Mars
and
the
King, and
the
rest
of
it.
Chuck
me
the
Longfellow
again."

I
handed
him
the
book
and
wrote
out
as
much
as
I
could
remember
of
his
description
of
the
sea-fight,
appealing
to
him
from
time
to time
for
confirmation
of
fact
or
detail.
He
would
answer
without raising
his
eyes
from
the
book,
as
assuredly
as
though
all
his
knowledge
lay
before
him
on
the
printed
page.
I
spoke
under
the
normal key
of
my
voice
that
the
current
might
not
be
broken,
and
I
know that
he
was
not
aware
of
what
he
was
saying,
for
his
thoughts
were out
on
the
sea
with
Longfellow.

"Charlie,"
I
asked,
"when
the
rowers
on
the
galleys
mutinied
how did
they
kill
their
overseers?"

"Tore
up
the
benches
and
brained
'em.
That
happened
when
a heavy
sea
was
running.
An
overseer
on
the
lower
deck
slipped
from the
centre
plank
and
fell
among
the
rowers.
They
choked
him
to death
against
the
side
of
the
ship
with
their
chained
hands
quite quietly,
and
it
was
too
dark
for
the
other
overseer
to
see
what
had happened.
When
he
asked,
he
was
pulled
down
too
and
choked,
and the
lower
deck
fought
their
way
up
deck
by
deck,
with
the
pieces
of the
broken
benches
banging
behind
'em.
How
they
howled!"

"And
what
happened
after
that?"

"I
don't
know.
The
hero
went
away—red
hair
and
red
beard
and
all. That
was
after
he
had
captured
our
galley,
I
think."

The
sound
of
my
voice
irritated
him,
and
he
motioned
slightly
with his
left
hand
as
a
man
does
when
interruption
jars.

"You
never
told
me
he
was
red-headed
before,
or
that
he
captured your
galley,"
I
said,
after
a
discreet
interval.

Charlie
did
not
raise
his
eyes.

"He
was
as
red
as
a
red
bear,"
said
he,
abstractedly.
"He
came
from
the
north;
they
said
so
in
the
galley
when
he
looked
for
rowers—not
slaves,
but
free
men.
Afterward—years
and
years
afterward—news
came
from
another
ship,
or
else
he
came
back"

His
lips
moved
in
silence.
He
was
rapturously
retasting
some
poem before
him.

"Where had he been,
then?" I was almost whispering that the sentence might come gentle to
whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on my behalf.

"To the Beaches—the Long and Wonderful
Beaches!" was the reply, after a minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi?" I asked, tingling from head to foot.