at work in
the outhouse, and thoroughly enjoying a task which might have daunted
one of less boyish confidence. He was, in fact, recasting the 'Fasti'
of Ovid into English verse, using for that purpose a spirited, if
literal, prose translation (published by Mr Bohn) in default of the
original, from which his ignorance of the Latin language precluded him.
For a taste:--

"What sea, what land, knows not Arion's fame!
The rivers by his song were turned as stiff as glass:
The hungry wolf stood still, the lamb did much the same--
Pursuing and pursued, producing an _impasse_--"

But while delighting in this labour, Mr Benny was at any time ready, nay
eager, for a chat. At Cai's entrance he pushed up his spectacles and
beamed.

"Ah, good morning, Captain Hocken!--Good morning! I take this as really
friendly. . . . You find me wooing the Muses as usual; up and early.
Some authors, sir,--not that I dare claim that title,--have found their
best inspirations by the midnight oil, even in the small hours.
Edgar Allan Poe--an irregular genius--you are acquainted with his
'Raven,' sir?--"

"His what?"

"His 'Raven'; a poem about a bird that perched itself upon a bust and
kept saying 'Nevermore,' like a parrot."

Cai winced. "On a bust, did you say? Whose bust?"

"A bust of Pallas, sir, in the alleged possession of Mr Poe himself:
Pallas being otherwise Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, usually
represented with an Owl."

"I don't know much about birds," confessed Cai, reduced to helplessness
by this erudition. "And I don't know anything about poetry, more's the
pity--having been caught young and apprenticed to the sea."

"And nothing to be ashamed of in that, Captain Hocken!"

'The sea, the sea, the open sea--
The blue, the fresh, the ever free.'

"I daresay you've often felt like that about it, as did the late Barry
Cornwall, otherwise Bryan Waller Procter, whose daughter, the gifted
Adelaide Anne Procter, prior to her premature decease, composed
'The Lost Chord,' everywhere so popular as a cornet solo. It is one of
the curiosities of literature," went on Mr Benny confidentially, "that
the author of that breezy (not to say briny) outburst could not even
cross from Dover to Calais without being prostrated by _mal de mer_;
insomuch that his good lady (who happened, by the way, to survive him
for a number of years, and, in fact, died quite recently), being of a
satirical humour, and herself im