ute till I see how I am going to manage my procession of
wives. You seem to have married extensively, and I must rough 'em in
with the pencil--Medes, Parthians, Edomites.... Now, setting aside the
weakness and the wickedness and--and the fat-headedness of deliberately
trying to do work that will live, as they call it, I'm content with the
knowledge that I've done my best up to date, and I shan't do anything
like it again for some hours at least--probably years. Most probably
never.'

'What! any stuff you have in stock your best work?' said Torpenhow.

'Anything you've sold?' said the Nilghai.

'Oh no. It isn't here and it isn't sold. Better than that, it can't be
sold, and I don't think any one knows where it is. I'm sure I don't....
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-had 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 Societ